Cognitive Evolutionary Search to Select Feature Interactions for Click-Through Rate Prediction

Click-Through Rate (CTR) prediction of intelligent marketing systems is of great importance, in which feature interaction selection plays a key role. Most approaches model interactions of features by the same pre-defined operation under expert guidance, among which improper interactions may bring unnecessary noise and complicate the training process. To that end, in this paper, we aim to adaptively evolve the model to select proper operations to interact on feature pairs under task guidance. Inspired by natural evolution, we propose a general Cognitive EvoLutionary Search (CELS) framework, where cognitive ability refers to the malleability of organisms to orientate to the environment. Specifically, we conceptualize interactions as genomes, models as organisms, and tasks as natural environments. Mirroring how genetic malleability develops environmental adaptability, we thus diagnose the fitness of models to simulate the survival rates of organisms for natural selection, thereby an evolution path can be planned and visualized, offering an intuitive interpretation of the mechanisms underlying interaction modeling and selection. Based on the CELS framework, we develop four instantiations including individual-based search and population-based search. We demonstrate how individual mutation and population crossover enable CELS to evolve into diverse models suitable for various tasks and data, providing ready-to-use models. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that CELS significantly outperforms state-of-the-art approaches.