Optimizing Marketing Subsidies via Counterfactual Learning with Asymmetric Reward Function
Abstract
In marketing, optimizing subsidy allocation to maximize overall profits is of substantial economic importance. Prior research has employed treatment effect estimation techniques to identify subsidy-sensitive items and design corresponding allocation strategies. However, more accurate treatment effect estimations do not necessarily lead to better allocations, underscoring the critical influence of decision boundaries in decision-making. This paper argues that optimal allocation fundamentally depends on predicting the expected optimal subsidy, a challenge distinct from conventional treatment effect estimation or causal decision-making, which existing approaches fail to address. To fill this gap, we introduce a two-stage Counterfactual optimal subsidy Learning method with an Asymmetric reward (CoLA). In the first stage, we derive a coarse estimate of the expected subsidy threshold by exploiting order information and the conditional independence between expected and observed subsidies. In the second stage, we refine these estimates using an asymmetric loss function, leading to more robust predictions. Under practical budget constraints, we prioritize candidates based on their Sharpe ratios to determine the final subsidy allocation strategy. Experiments on three public datasets and an online A/B test show that our method achieves significant performance improvements, yielding the highest total profit and incremental leverage ratios.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yusen Huo | 100 | 100 Generative Auto-bidding via Conditional Diffusion Modeling (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 AuctionNet: A Novel Benchmark for Decision-Making in Large-Scale Games (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Sustainable Online Reinforcement Learning for Auto-bidding (2022) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 2 | Zhilin Zhang 0003 | 97 | 100 Learning-Based Ad Auction Design with Externalities: The Framework and A Matching-Based Approach (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Truthful Auctions for Automated Bidding in Online Advertising (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 3 | Chuan Yu 0002 | 95 | 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Learning to Advertise for Organic Traffic Maximization in E-Commerce Product Feeds (2019) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Neural Auction: End-to-End Learning of Auction Mechanisms for E-Commerce Advertising (2021) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Fernando Diaz 0001 | 21 |
Area-chair candidates (2)
| Yanan Niu | 21 | 15 papers | |
| Fernando Diaz 0001 assigned | 21 | 12 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yusen Huo assigned | 100 | 3 | 100 Generative Auto-bidding via Conditional Diffusion Modeling (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 AuctionNet: A Novel Benchmark for Decision-Making in Large-Scale Games (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 2 | Zhilin Zhang 0003 assigned | 97 | 3 | 100 Learning-Based Ad Auction Design with Externalities: The Framework and A Matching-Based Approach (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 3 | Chuan Yu 0002 assigned | 95 | 3 | 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Learning to Advertise for Organic Traffic Maximization in E-Commerce Product Feeds (2019) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
|
| 4 | Tianyu Wang 0028 | 76 | 3 | 100 Marketing Hosting: From Fixed to Endogenous Budgets (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
|
| 5 | Ching Law | 44 | 3 | 100 Auto-bidding under Return-on-Spend Constraints with Uncertainty Quantification (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 63 AutoPP: Towards Automated Product Poster Generation and Optimization (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 6 | Xialong Liu | 44 | 3 | 100 R&F-Inventory: A Large-Scale Dataset for Monotonic Inventory Estimation in Reach and Frequency Advertising (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 ZIPBid: Hierarchical Zero-shot Incremental Spend Planning for Auto-bidding (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
|
| 7 | Xuanhua Yang | 36 | 3 | 63 Gradient Coordination for Quantifying and Maximizing Knowledge Transference in Multi-Task Learning (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 60 AdaSparse: Learning Adaptively Sparse Structures for Multi-Domain Click-Through Rate Prediction (2022) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 8 | Xin Zhang 0091 | 33 | 3 | 100 Temporal Uplift Modeling for Online Marketing (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 19 Graph-aware collaborative reasoning for click-through rate prediction (2023) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 9 | Shijie Wang 0002 | 28 | 3 | 100 Tree-of-AdEditor: Heuristic Tree Reasoning for Automated Video Advertisement Editing with Large Language Model (2025) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 27 Continuous-time Discrete-space Diffusion Model for Recommendation (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 10 | Yifan Wang 0017 | 27 | 3 | 60 Unbiased Delayed Feedback Label Correction for Conversion Rate Prediction (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 26 Popularity-Aware Alignment and Contrast for Mitigating Popularity Bias (2024) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 11 | Yuta Saito | 25 | 3 | 26 Counterfactual Learning and Evaluation for Recommender Systems: Foundations, Implementations, and Recent Advances (2021) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization 26 Counterfactual Evaluation and Learning for Interactive Systems: Foundations, Implementations, and Recent Advances (2022) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 12 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 | 25 | 3 | 27 β-DPO: Direct Preference Optimization with Dynamic β (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization 27 AlphaDPO: Adaptive Reward Margin for Direct Preference Optimization (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 13 | Zechun Niu | 25 | 3 | 27 Distributionally Robust Optimization for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank 26 Addressing Personalized Bias for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank |
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| 14 | Sunhao Dai | 24 | 3 | 60 Dually Enhanced Delayed Feedback Modeling for Streaming Conversion Rate Prediction (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 26 Counteracting User Attention Bias in Music Streaming Recommendation via Reward Modification (2022) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 15 | Chongming Gao | 24 | 3 | 28 SPRec: Self-Play to Debias LLM-based Recommendation (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization 28 Process-Supervised LLM Recommenders via Flow-guided Tuning (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 16 | Yimeng Bai | 24 | 3 | 27 GradCraft: Elevating Multi-task Recommendations through Holistic Gradient Crafting (2024) Multi-Task and Multi-Objective Optimization 24 Leveraging Watch-time Feedback for Short-Video Recommendations: A Causal Labeling Framework (2023) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 17 | Theresia Veronika Rampisela | 24 | 3 | 24 Measuring Individual User Fairness with User Similarity and Effectiveness Disparity (2026) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation 24 Evaluation Measures of Individual Item Fairness for Recommender Systems: A Critical Study (2025) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation |
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| 18 | Shuchang Liu 0001 COI: co-author | 24 | 3 | 26 Modeling User Retention through Generative Flow Networks (2024) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 26 PrefRec: Recommender Systems with Human Preferences for Reinforcing Long-term User Engagement (2023) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 19 | Jizhi Zhang | 24 | 3 | 27 Large Language Models are Learnable Planners for Long-Term Recommendation (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization 27 TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 20 | Yang Zhang 0072 COI: co-author | 23 | 3 | 27 TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization 27 Reason4Rec: Deliberative User Preference Alignment of Large Language Models for Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 21 | Jaime Arguello | 22 | 3 | 28 Sources of evidence for vertical selection (2009) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval 28 Learning to aggregate vertical results into web search results (2011) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval |
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| 22 | Jie Jiang 0015 | 22 | 3 | 62 Ads Recommendation in a Collapsed and Entangled World (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 27 STEM: Unleashing the Power of Embeddings for Multi-Task Recommendation (2024) Multi-Task and Multi-Objective Optimization |
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| 23 | Xiao Zhang 0034 | 22 | 3 | 26 Counterfactual Reward Modification for Streaming Recommendation with Delayed Feedback (2021) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization 26 HyperBandit: Contextual Bandit with Hypernewtork for Time-Varying User Preferences in Streaming Recommendation (2023) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 24 | Yongqi Li 0001 | 22 | 3 | 27 Efficient Inference for Large Language Model-based Generative Recommendation (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 27 EARN: Efficient Inference Acceleration for LLM-based Generative Recommendation by Register Tokens (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 25 | Han Li 0005 COI: co-author | 22 | 3 | 26 Making Transformer Decoders Better Differentiable Indexers (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 26 DualGR: Generative Retrieval with Long and Short-Term Interests Modeling (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 26 | Xuanhui Wang | 21 | 3 | 28 Situational Context for Ranking in Personal Search (2017) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval 26 Learning to Rank in Theory and Practice: From Gradient Boosting to Neural Networks and Unbiased Learning (2019) Unbiased Learning to Rank |
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| 27 | Seongmin Park 0002 | 21 | 3 | 26 Dual Unbiased Recommender Learning for Implicit Feedback (2021) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation 26 Bilateral Self-unbiased Learning from Biased Implicit Feedback (2022) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 28 | Huifeng Guo | 21 | 3 | 25 LLMTreeRec: Unleashing the Power of Large Language Models for Cold-Start Recommendations (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 24 A Comprehensive Survey on Automated Machine Learning for Recommendations (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 31 | Romain Deffayet | 21 | 3 | 25 SARDINE: Simulator for Automated Recommendation in Dynamic and Interactive Environments (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation 25 Generative Slate Recommendation with Reinforcement Learning (2023) Offline RL for Recommendation |
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| 32 | Bo Chen 0023 | 21 | 3 | 26 Towards efficient and effective unlearning of large language models for recommendation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 25 Large language models make sample-efficient recommender systems (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |