About the customer
Redbrain is Europe’s number one online shopping performance partner. Processing 40 billion products every month, Redbrain helps retailers get their product listing ads seen by the right customers at the right time, with retailers only paying when there is a confirmed sale. Working with retailers large and small, Redbrain’s client list includes Ebay, Disney, Nike, JD Sports, Nintendo, and Lego.
As inflation and economic uncertainty place downward pressure on advertising budgets, retailers are increasingly having to find ways to deliver greater returns on their existing ad spends. One way to do more with less is to ensure that ads reach the right customer at the right time. However, this is not the easiest thing to do.
That’s where Redbrain comes in. With the largest ecommerce product database in Europe, Redbrain optimises retailers’ product data to ensure that their product-listing ads not only appear at the top of Google Shopping and Bing Shopping carousels. They are shown to the right customers when they are actively looking to make a purchase. As a result, Redbrain drives more relevant traffic to retailers’ sites, while ensuring marketers aren’t paying to serve ads where they’re not needed. And because Redbrain only charges retailers for confirmed sales, it is a risk-free addition to retailers’ sales strategy.
“Our offering has never been as important as it is today,” says Will Viles, Creative Growth Marketer, Redbrain. “In an economy that’s squeezing everyone, we offer a very competitive cost-per-sale. With no risk attached, meaning we can increase sales for retailers without pushing their costs up.”
The Challenge
To further optimise its Google Cloud investments and support its expansion into AI and ML-driven data processes, Redbrain sought a deeper understanding of its cloud expenditure and its correlation with business objectives. This initiative aimed to ensure that Redbrain’s technology investments were strategically aligned with its growth goals and delivering maximum value to the business.
Finding the right partner to get the most from Google Cloud
Redbrain runs on Google Cloud, where it ingests and optimises 40 billion products a month. Because Google Cloud is a vast platform with an ever-expanding product suite, Redbrain has always worked with a digital partner to ensure it is getting the most from the platform.
Recognising the strategic importance of AI and ML in optimising its data processes, Redbrain sought a partner with deep expertise in these areas. Devoteam’s proven ability to align cloud solutions with core business objectives made them the ideal choice to guide Redbrain’s expansion into AI and ML, ensuring their Google Cloud investments deliver maximum value.
“We needed somebody who would work more in partnership with us and take the lead in helping us optimise Google Cloud, giving us insight into what’s driving our overall spend, as well as improving our understanding of the opportunities there.”
Phil Bannister
CTO, Redbrain
Building the foundations of a strong working relationship
When Redbrain began working with Devoteam in July 2022, Bannister was impressed with the level of attention his team received, and how much energy was put into supporting them at the outset of their journey.
Through the first few months of regular consultations with Redbrain, Devoteam engaged with the business, analysing its objectives and how they correlated with its use of Google Cloud. The consultations resulted in a few early wins for Redbrain that not only led to cost efficiencies through AI FinOps, but crucially, confirmed to Bannister that this was the right partnership.
“Devoteam invested significant time in understanding our technical evolution and projected our cloud usage with a highly credible model,” explains Bannister. “This gave us complete confidence in making informed decisions about our future cloud spend. Their approach demonstrates a deep commitment to understanding our specific needs and providing tailored solutions.”
The First Steps on the FinOps Journey
Redbrain is now making use of Devoteam’s expertise in cloud management to gain a clearer understanding of how its Google Cloud expenditure correlates to its data storage.
“Because of the complexity of our business, we are not there yet, but we have started the FinOps journey towards getting more clarity on how our Google Cloud costs break down,” Bannister explains. “And because Devoteam wants to talk about what’s going on in the business, it’s easier to go on that journey together.”
One area where the FinOps discussions have already borne fruit is in Redbrain’s use of Google Cloud database BigTable. Discussions between Mark Howson, Head of Platform and SRE at Redbrain and Devoteam have resulted in changes to the way Redbrain uses the database, saving the business money.
Automating data optimisation processes with AI and ML
While FinOps consultations continue, Redbrain has also begun to partner with Devoteam to automate more of its data optimisation for Google Shopping. Devoteam is currently running a solution to demonstrate that AI can be effectively used to improve the quality of product data, to get more products approved in Google Shopping and drive more revenue as a result.
“With data from 40 billion products, everything we can do to enhance the data quality is beneficial to us in terms of improving revenue and profitability,” said Bannister, Head of Engineering at Redbrain. “That’s where automation comes into play. We’re already talking to Devoteam about how else we can use AI to optimise our product data for even better performance in the Google Shopping world.”
Improved ROI for retailers and Redbrain alike
As Devoteam continues to support Redbrain in aligning its business objectives with its Google Cloud spend, Bannister is confident that it will begin to drive efficiencies in expenditure. That in turn will enable Redbrain to continue working with Devoteam on AI and ML solutions to optimise product data and ultimately drive increased sales for retailers, ensuring they get the improved ROI that is so critical in the current climate.
For Bannister, this is all made possible by the nature of the partnership that Devoteam and Redbrain have developed. “Devoteam understands us as a business,” says Bannister. “They understand the back-end infrastructure. And they work very much as a partner to help us get the best not just out of the tech that we are using, but out of the solutions that we’ve built and the data that we’ve got. We’re confident they’ve got the capabilities to deliver the improvements we need.”
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