Related papers: A Reinforcement Learning Approach in Multi-Phase S…
In this thesis, we research learning algorithms for optimal decision making in two different contexts, Reinforcement Learning in Part I and Auction Design in Part II. Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning that is…
In this paper, we study the problem of learning to bid in repeated first-price auctions with budget constraints. In each period, the decision maker needs to submit a bid to win the auction and maximize the total collected reward, subject to…
We study online learning in repeated first-price auctions where a bidder, only observing the winning bid at the end of each auction, learns to adaptively bid in order to maximize her cumulative payoff. To achieve this goal, the bidder faces…
We consider reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov Decision Processes in which an agent repeatedly interacts with an environment that is modeled by a controlled Markov process. At each time step $t$, it earns a reward, and also incurs a…
In the reinforcement learning literature, there are many algorithms developed for either Contextual Bandit (CB) or Markov Decision Processes (MDP) environments. However, when deploying reinforcement learning algorithms in the real world,…
Budget management strategies in repeated auctions have received growing attention in online advertising markets. However, previous work on budget management in online bidding mainly focused on second-price auctions. The rapid shift from…
Auction-based recommender systems are prevalent in online advertising platforms, but they are typically optimized to allocate recommendation slots based on immediate expected return metrics, neglecting the downstream effects of…
Algorithms increasingly automate bidding in online auctions, raising concerns about tacit bid suppression and revenue shortfalls. Prior work identifies individual mechanisms behind algorithmic bid suppression, but it remains unclear which…
Recently the online advertising market has exhibited a gradual shift from second-price auctions to first-price auctions. Although there has been a line of works concerning online bidding strategies in first-price auctions, it still remains…
First-price auctions have largely replaced traditional bidding approaches based on Vickrey auctions in programmatic advertising. As far as learning is concerned, first-price auctions are more challenging because the optimal bidding strategy…
Real-time bidding (RTB) has become a critical way of online advertising. In RTB, an advertiser can participate in bidding ad impressions to display its advertisements. The advertiser determines every impression's bidding price according to…
Reinforcement learning algorithms are usually stated without theoretical guarantees regarding their performance. Recently, Jin, Yang, Wang, and Jordan (COLT 2020) showed a polynomial-time reinforcement learning algorithm (namely, LSVI-UCB)…
We consider un-discounted reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) under temporal drifts, ie, both the reward and state transition distributions are allowed to evolve over time, as long as their respective total…
Learning to bid in repeated first-price auctions is a fundamental problem at the interface of game theory and machine learning, which has seen a recent surge in interest due to the transition of display advertising to first-price auctions.…
Online advertising platforms use automated auctions to connect advertisers with potential customers, requiring effective bidding strategies to maximize profits. Accurate ad impact estimation requires considering three key factors: delayed…
We study the bidding problem in repeated uniform price multi-unit auctions from the perspective of a value-maximizing buyer. The buyer aims to maximize their cumulative value over $T$ rounds while adhering to per-round return-on-investment…
Over the past decade, bidding in power markets has attracted widespread attention. Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been widely used for power market bidding as a powerful AI tool to make decisions under real-world uncertainties. However,…
Internet advertisers (buyers) repeatedly procure ad impressions from ad platforms (sellers) with the aim to maximize total conversion (i.e. ad value) while respecting both budget and return-on-investment (ROI) constraints for efficient…
Real-Time Bidding (RTB) is an important mechanism in modern online advertising systems. Advertisers employ bidding strategies in RTB to optimize their advertising effects subject to various financial requirements, especially the…
In this paper, we study the non-stationary online second price auction problem. We assume that the seller is selling the same type of items in $T$ rounds by the second price auction, and she can set the reserve price in each round. In each…