GRAB: An LLM-Inspired Sequence-First Click-Through Rate Prediction Modeling Paradigm

Abstract: Traditional Deep Learning Recommendation Models (DLRMs) face increasing bottlenecks in performance and efficiency, often struggling with generalization and long-sequence modeling. Inspired by the scaling success of LLMs, we propose Generative Ranking for Ads at Baidu (GRAB), an end-to-end generative framework for Click-Through Rate (CTR) prediction. GRAB integrates a novel Causal Action-aware Multi-channel Attention (CamA) mechanism to effectively capture temporal dynamics and specific action signals within user behavior sequences. Full-scale online deployment demonstrates that GRAB significantly outperforms established DLRMs, delivering a 3.05% increase in revenue and a 3.49% rise in CTR. Furthermore, the model demonstrates desirable scaling behavior: its expressive power shows a monotonic and approximately linear improvement as longer interaction sequences are utilized.