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Optimizing Marketing Subsidies via Counterfactual Learning with Asymmetric Reward Function

sigir26-225 · Full research paper · Xiang Li, Yanghao Xiao, Chunyuan Zheng, Qian Zou, Cheng Bing, Wei Lin, Haoxuan Li, Zhouchen Lin
Advertising and Auction Mechanisms · 100%
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

#ReviewerMatchWhy (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
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
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 chairMatch
Fernando Diaz 0001 21
Area-chair candidates (2)
Yanan Niu 2115 papers
Fernando Diaz 0001 assigned 2112 papers

Candidates from the panel ranked by match score

#ReviewerMatchLoadWhy
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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