Speqta’s CEO Fredrik Lindros prepares us for the merciless e-commerce industry by answering questions on their new Google Shopping ad-optimization tool, Bidbrain™!
Learn how to get ahead in your market by making use of Speqta’s new AI-based secret weapon for bidding on Google Shopping Ads — which promises an average 10-40% increase of sales at the same CoS or ROAS% (Return on Ad Spend)!
Who stands to make the most benefit from a tool like Bidbrain?
Fredrik Lindros: Google Shopping Ads have only continued to increase in value in the past couple of years. And, more and more e-retailers are investing their sales and/or advertising costs in order to take advantage of the high traffic and high conversions that it brings.
This is why we created Bidbrain. It’s for people in the e-commerce space. Or, are otherwise in the business of selling online and advertising on Google Shopping Ads. The way I like to see it though is that our service is a tool for anyone and everyone looking to optimize their sales and profits through Google Shopping Ads. Be they an agency or a retailer.
What motivated you to develop a Google Shopping Ad-Optimization tool like Bidbrain™?
Fredrik Lindros: Google Shopping has been rising in popularity in the past couple of years. And it’s no longer something that anyone in the online retail space can ignore. In a study from the U.S. that came out in 2018, it was discovered that over 75% of all retail search ad spend was made up of Google Shopping ads. Thanks, in large part, to their ability to naturally generate both higher online retail clicks and higher revenue per click than other alternatives. Which is the reason why a lot of major brands have begun to favor Google Shopping Ads over traditional search ads — which, comparatively, are just inherently not as effective at driving conversions.
In any case, we at Speqta saw this as our opportunity to create a tool that can help e-retailers bid for traffic more smartly. Bidbrain™ turned out to be more than that, of course. But, at its core, Bidbrain™ was developed with an AI that is capable of helping you bid as smart as possible on Google Shopping Ads.
Did you ever experience any doubts while working on Bidbrain™?
Fredrik Lindros: I believe that a certain level of skepticism is healthy no matter what you are working on and that blind determination or optimism only leads to unnecessary risks. In that sense, having some measure of doubts keeps you on your toes and ensures that you are working at your best.
So, in a way, yes, doubts were in fact expressed while in the making of Bidbrain. But nothing unhealthy. I sought after those doubts myself because I value open dialogue when it comes to innovation and wanted to make sure that no holes were left unfilled.
In what way did Bidbrain™ exceed your original expectations?
Fredrik Lindros: As mentioned, Bidbrain, at its core, was an AI-based bidding optimization solution for Google Shopping Ads. But, it went through quite a bit of testing and development before we decided to release it as its own standalone SaaS platform. We knew that it was a winner from the very beginning — seeing as the first customer that we tested (a small store inside a larger e-commerce group) had seen their sales boosted up to 5x at the same CoS (Cost of Sales), but its evolution didn’t stop there.
Speqta is being released as not just a bidding optimization tool but also a product feed optimizer, for getting you that higher PLA quality score that you’re looking for. It’s also an enthusiastic learner, capable of taking in endless amounts of structured data in order to perform and predict conversions better. And, it can serve as an excellent analytics tool capable of providing rich insights that can be used for future campaigns. All of this makes it a world ahead of most standard alternatives.
Speaking of other alternatives, how does Bidbrain compare?
Fredrik Lindros: It depends on which alternative we’re speaking of. If we’re talking about Google’s own Target-ROAS or Smart Shopping, Bidbrain stands tall by being 100% transparent about how the bidding is being performed, which is comparatively better already than Google’s own black box bidding solutions, where you can never truly be confident that the bids are 100% optimized for you. Plainly put, with Bidbrain™ you can rest assured that its AI is working hard to invests only on traffic that have the best possible chance of conversions, while the same cannot be said with Google’s own tools.
As for other third-party alternatives like Adobe’s own Search Marketing Management tool, which is a hybrid bid optimization solution that works very broadly on full campaign management and thus comparable to a swiss army knife, I would liken Bidbrain™ to a professional Japanese Chef knife in comparison, similar to Optmyzr (an award-winning tool that saw its start in the USA). This means that Bidbrain™ is a very fine tool capable of hyper precision and sophisticated work, to be used only for a specific type of purpose and thus, able to do its job more excellently than the comparatively blunt multi-functional tools.
And finally, where do you see Bidbrain going in the next 5 years?
Fredrik Lindros: Time will tell, I suppose. But, I hope that Bidbrain will become a well-loved SaaS tool used by as many retailers as possible. Of course, I also fully expect it to continue evolving as time goes on and as more people come to accept the wonderful world that can be created by Artificial Intelligence.
