Meta-Learning Based CTR Algorithm Selection and Hyperparameter Optimization

The existing Click-Through Rate (CTR) algorithms have their own advantages and are sensitive to hyperparameters. Quickly obtaining a high-performance CTR model for the new task can bring good application effects. However, ordinary users fail to do so due to the lack of domain knowledge. In this paper, we remedy this deficiency by proposing AutoCTR, an efficient meta-learning based Combined Algorithm Selection and Hyperparameter Optimization (CASH) algorithm, to help non-expert users quickly find the best CTR model. In AutoCTR, we introduce the meta-learning technique to make full use of the meta-information w.r.t. CTR to guide for the new CTR task. Specifically, we utilize the meta-information to learn characteristics and representations of CTR algorithms with different settings. We use these meta experiences combined with few evaluation information on the target CTR dataset to efficiently exploring the huge CTR CASH search space for the new task. The CTR model representation method has significant influence on the quality of the learned meta experiences. To further enhance the experiences quality, we also design a Graph Neural Network (GNN) based embedding learning method. This method can link different CTR models through their components, and thus quickly learning higher-quality model representations. Extensive experimental results show that AutoCTR can quickly select suitable CTR models for different CTR tasks. Compared with the existing CASH algorithms, which ignore meta-information or rely on a huge amount of meta-information, AutoCTR is more reasonable and efficient.