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This arXiv preprint proposes a technique for controlling how prominently ads appear in LLM outputs and for identifying which generated text is advertising, using control tokens, preference optimization, and attention-based attribution. The reported gains are benchmark-specific and come from the authors' own experiments across six models plus human evaluations, so they need independent replication. For readers, the work matters as an early look at how monetization pressure could shape LLM response design and transparency about commercial content.
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AdKnob: Ad Intensity Control and Labeling for LLM-Native Advertising

arXiv2 min read

arXiv:2611.00822v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model (LLM)-native advertising has emerged as a viable monetization channel as LLM service providers seek sustainable revenue streams. However, integrating native ads into LLM responses introduces two largely understudied challenges: (1) controlling ad intensity -- how prominently advertising content appears -- and (2) ad labeling -- identifying which segments of the generated text constitute advertising. We propose AdKnob, a framework jointly addressing both challenges. For ad intensity control, we introduce new ad control tokens without pretrained semantic associations and align the model via direct preference optimization to generate ads at each desired level. For ad labeling, we propose an attention rollout-based attribution mechanism that identifies ad segments by tracing their attribution to input ad-related tokens, requiring no additional inference cost. We further construct MI-KnobSet, the first multi-level ad intensity preference dataset for LLM-native ads. Experiments across six LLMs and human evaluations show that AdKnob achieves uniformly spaced ad intensities where baselines collapse to a narrow range, achieves the highest ad labeling accuracy while being over 500x faster than the strongest baseline, and is preferred over baselines by human evaluators up to 89.6% of the time.

Abstract:Large language model (LLM)-native advertising has emerged as a viable monetization channel as LLM service providers seek sustainable revenue streams. However, integrating native ads into LLM responses introduces two largely understudied challenges: (1) controlling ad intensity -- how prominently advertising content appears -- and (2) ad labeling -- identifying which segments of the generated text constitute advertising. We propose AdKnob, a framework jointly addressing both challenges. For ad intensity control, we introduce new ad control tokens without pretrained semantic associations and align the model via direct preference optimization to generate ads at each desired level. For ad labeling, we propose an attention rollout-based attribution mechanism that identifies ad segments by tracing their attribution to input ad-related tokens, requiring no additional inference cost. We further construct MI-KnobSet, the first multi-level ad intensity preference dataset for LLM-native ads. Experiments across six LLMs and human evaluations show that AdKnob achieves uniformly spaced ad intensities where baselines collapse to a narrow range, achieves the highest ad labeling accuracy while being over 500x faster than the strongest baseline, and is preferred over baselines by human evaluators up to 89.6% of the time.

Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computers and Society (cs.CY); Machine Learning (cs.LG)

arXiv:2611.00822 [cs.AI]

(or arXiv:2611.00822v1 [cs.AI] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2611.00822 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 288 words

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