2025 Tencent Advertising Algorithm Competition Opens with $280K Grand Prize

Tencent Ads has opened registration for the 2025 Tencent Advertising Algorithm Competition, an international challenge designed for emerging tech talents working at the intersection of AI, advertising, and recommendation systems. The competition invites full-time students from around the world to apply their skills in developing generative models for next-generation ad recommendations.

Participants will use anonymized, multi-modal user behavior data, including images and text to predict future ad interactions. The focus is on exploring generative recommendation models beyond conventional approaches, supported by baseline models and real-world datasets.

Benefits 

•  Awards for top teams:
    • 1st place – $280,000
    • 2nd place – $83,800
    • 3rd place – $42,000
    • 4th place – $14,000
• Guaranteed full-time offers for the top 10 teams
• Priority interviews for all finalists
• Internship offers and exclusive gadgets for semi-finalists
• Access to multi-modal datasets and research references

Who Should Apply 

• Full-time students (undergraduate, graduate, or postdoc)
• Individuals or teams with technical expertise in machine learning, AI, data science, or recommendation systems
• Those interested in generative recommendation research or working in applied AI within advertising

This competition encourages participants to break through traditional discriminative recommendation frameworks and explore generative recommendation solutions by providing baseline models and considering technical evaluations in addition to competition results.