The paper introduces Q-Target Pretrained Transformers (QTPT), a method that replaces supervised behavior cloning with a Bellman-style Q‑target objective for in‑context reinforcement learning. QTPT retains the context‑conditioned Transformer architecture but learns to estimate action values using rewards and transitions from the context, rather than merely imitating offline actions. The authors provide theoretical analysis in stochastic linear bandits and finite‑horizon MDPs, demonstrating improved robustness to weak or suboptimal data, and empirically show gains over supervised pretraining on controlled RL benchmarks and extensions to D4RL Kitchen and AntMaze.
By Yichen Lin, Xuyuan Xiong, Xue Wang, Xiangfu Meng, Mike Mingcheng Wei, Tao Yao
arXiv:2606. 14192v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Auto-bidding is a core component of real-time advertising systems, where decisions must optimize long-term performance under budget and cost constraints, while online exploration is prohibitively risky.
By Miduo Cui, Haochen Wang, Shangqin Mao, Xun Yang, Qianlong Xie, Xingxing Wang, Xuri Ge, Ying Zhou, Zhiwei Xu
arXiv:2509. 15927v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Auto-bidding is a critical tool for advertisers to improve advertising performance.
By Zhiyu Mou, Yiqin Lv, Miao Xu, Qi Wang, Yixiu Mao, Jinghao Chen, Qichen Ye, Chao Li, Rongquan Bai, Chuan Yu, Jian Xu, Bo Zheng
arXiv:2604. 05845v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Auto-bidding services optimize real-time bidding strategies for advertisers under key performance indicator (KPI) constraints such as target return on investment and budget.
By Linghui Meng, Chun Gan, Shengsheng Niu, Chengcheng Zhang, Chenchen Li, Chuan Yang, Yi Mao, Xin Zhu, Jie He, Zhangang Lin, Ching Law
arXiv:2607. 17281v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Auto-bidding plays an essential role in online advertising, automatically adjusting bids for advertisers to optimize their commercial goals.
By Yuejia Dou, Hesong Wang, Xinyu Zhang, Tianyu Wang, Zhilin Zhang, Chuan Yu, Jian Xu, Bo Zheng, Qi Qi
arXiv:2607. 24779v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Online advertising bidding systems typically deploy multiple offline-trained expert models (e.
By Ji Wu, Yunshan Peng, Wentao Bai, Yunke Bai, Wenzheng Shu, Jinan Pang, Yanxiang Zeng, Xialong Liu
arXiv:2606. 28943v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Learning to bid in repeated multi-unit auctions with bandit feedback poses a fundamental challenge.
By Junhan Li, Yuxin Zhang, Haoran Wang, Minghao Chen
OneBid is a unified auto‑bidding foundation model that consolidates diverse cost‑per‑X (oCPX) advertising scenarios into a single framework. It builds on Decision Transformer by conditioning on two atomic signals—Return‑to‑Go for conversion value and Cost‑to‑Go for cost ratio—and incorporates value‑aware regularization. A sequence‑level Mixture‑of‑Experts architecture captures cross‑scenario knowledge while preserving low latency, and a Critic‑guided Relative Offline Policy optimization (CROP) aligns the backbone with scenario‑specific preferences without unsafe online exploration. In production at Kuaishou, OneBid achieved a 2.2% overall ADVV increase and up to 13.1% in the ROAS scenario.
By Yewen Li, Peng Jiang, Yitian Li, Pengfei Lv, Xialong Liu, Peng Jiang, Qingpeng Cai
The paper introduces Bidirectional Behavior Prior Distillation (B2PD), a method that uses action‑value priors to train a conditional variational autoencoder for generating high‑value behavior support. These expert behavior priors are then distilled into the online reinforcement learning agent, reducing inefficient exploration and stabilizing policy updates. Experiments on state‑ and pixel‑based tasks show that B2PD improves sample efficiency while maintaining stable learning dynamics.
By Gong Gao, Xiao Lai, Jiaji Shen, Ning Jia, Xianhui Liu, Weidong Zhao
arXiv:2607. 28916v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multistep credit assignment is critical for sample-efficient reinforcement learning, yet managing off-policy bias in Q-learning remains a fundamental challenge.
By Brett Daley
arXiv:2602. 08261v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Auto-bidding systems strive to maximize marketing value while maintaining high compliance with efficiency constraints, such as Target Cost-Per-Action (CPA).
By Binglin Wu, Yingyi Zhang, Xianneng Li, Ruyue Deng, Chuan Yue, Weiru Zhang, Xiaoyi Zeng
The paper introduces state abstractions that preserve the difference of Q‑functions for offline reinforcement learning, aiming to exclude irrelevant dynamics from rich state data. It proposes a dynamic generalization of the R‑learner that uses orthogonal estimation and sparse learning to estimate the Q‑function contrast, achieving faster convergence and consistency under a margin condition. Experiments on simulated and simulator‑augmented real data show variance reductions and demonstrate that the necessary information for sequential decision‑making can be smaller than that required for full state prediction.
By Defu Cao, Angela Zhou