Business

Speqta CEO Fredrik Lindros Teaches Us How to Say No to Black Box Bidding on PLAs with Their New AI-Based Bid-Optimization Tool Bidbrain™

Published

6 years ago

January 14, 2021

Stand out from the crowd by investing in Speqta’s new SaaS tool, Bidbrain™! An AI-based solution for Google Shopping ads that specializes in bid optimization. Developed specifically for the e-commerce industry and dedicated to getting you ahead of the competition by optimizing your Product List Ads (PLAs.)

In the interview below with Speqta’s CEO, Fredrik Lindros, learn more about this smart new tool and how you can bid more confidently and feel more secure about your businesses’ growth.

Please tell us something that not everyone knows about yourself!

Fredrik Lindros: I’ve always been personally driven by innovation and change, obsessed as I was over sci-fi shows like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, both of which instilled upon me an acceptance and an inclination towards new technology and innovation. .

As for my passion for being equally strategic and creative, I have my time as a magician to thank for that. Unorthodox, yes! But I did, in fact, work as a professional magician some time ago. And, after working odd gigs at kindergartens, company gatherings, and various other stages, I developed skills that would later show itself in my business work as a talent for presentation, communication, and marketing.

And how do you usually start your days? (Are you a proactive or reactive type?)

Fredrik Lindros: I would say that I am a bit of both. I have a very particular schedule that I follow to the ‘T’ most days as a result of my waking habits. But, I’m flexible enough that I can deal with the unexpected when they come.

More specifically, every day, I wake up while the rest of my family is still asleep. Usually in the time between 4 AM and 5 AM. I start things off with a cup of coffee and then work entirely at home until it’s time to go to the office to catch up with whoever is there for the day — we’ve done a lot of juggling to account for the global pandemic, but the work must go on.

The rest of the workday is spent hosting meetings, regularly communicating with others through email or Slack, and just working as efficiently as possible so that I can go back home and spend time with my children before the day ends and the routine starts anew.

Please introduce Bidbrain™! What is it? And, how can we use it?

Fredrik Lindros: In short. Bidbrain™ is a SaaS solution outfitted with both artificial intelligence and machine learning. We at Speqta developed it for the e-commerce industry to use for optimizing bids for Google Shopping Ads.

How would you say Bidbrain™ compares to manually bidding on PLAs?

Fredrik Lindros: E-retailers that show a preference over manual rule-based bidding on Google PLAs usually prize control over their bidding strategies. After all, at least then, they won’t have to suffer through Google’s automated black-box bidding strategies.

However, the main issue with manually bidding on PLAs, at least, when compared to BidBrain™, is that it just cannot beat the kind of results that you can achieve with an AI-based system. There’s no question there. Bidbrain not only optimizes your bidding strategies to receive the best outcomes, but it is also capable of product feed optimization in order to increase the quality score of your PLAs. Furthermore, all you need to do to keep it working is to continue feeding it data in order to fuel its intelligence.

I know that there are many e-retailers out there that are reluctant to use new technology like this. But, there’s no denying that compared to those who work manually, those who use AI-based optimization tools like Bidbrain, in the long-run, will always win over their competition.That’s just how technology advances.

How about those e-retailers that already use the automated bidding tools provided by Google? What kind of benefits would Bidbrain™ offer to them?

Fredrik Lindros: One thing that we addressed during the creation of Bidbrain is transparency. Many online retailers that use Google’s own tools can never be fully confident that the program is working for them at 100%. In fact, if you dissect the bids made by Google’s Target-ROAS or Smart Shopping, you’ll find that they are extremely high CPC-bids worth around 30-50 Euros each that result in very few conversions.

As a retailer, it’s just hard to feel secure with such black box bidding methods. Which is where Bidbrain™ comes in. Unlike Google’s tools, Bidbrain was designed to reveal all data. So, e-retailers will always know where their bids are going, and they can rest easy knowing that the AI is 100% on their side. All while enjoying the extra functionalities provided by our sophisticated product feed optimization tools, the helpful insights given for future campaigns, and so on.

What advice would you give to fellow business owners looking to release their own products?

Fredrik Lindros: Bidbrain™ was only developed to be as dynamic and as insightful as it is today with communication. And so, my advice to fellow business owners is simple: communicate. Talk to your team, talk to your key customers, just talk.

As a team, we got to know exactly what our customers were looking for and why they were looking for certain things. And this would not have been possible if our work environment had not been conducive to open dialogue. A significant portion of the developmental process of our service also involved just talking directly with our customers. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that these key customers more or less designed Bidbrain together with us. So, the more open you are to understanding the opinions of others, the better.

Business

Ipsos Helps Brands Understand How They Get Customer Experience Wrong & Why It’s Costing Them Millions

Published

4 weeks ago

June 26, 2026

Matthew Wiles

For brands looking to succeed in the modern business ecosystem, the customer experience (CX) is not something companies can afford to ignore. CX is a direct driver of revenue, loyalty, and growth for organizations.

Ipsos, one of the world’s leading market research firms, helps brands understand that failing to focus on the customer experience can lead to lost sales, which in turn can translate to not only millions in lost revenue but also lost trust and credibility in the market.

How brands still get CX wrong

“The customer decision and desire to do business with brands directly affect the bottom line,” says Brad Christian, Chief Commercial Officer at Ipsos – Experience Practice.

Customer experience may sound like a simple concept, but many brands still get it wrong. CX goes beyond surveys and feedback. Leaders who fail to connect feedback in a meaningful way to goals such as retention, repeat visits or purchases, advocacy, and operational performance fail to deliver on their service promises. The emotional and functional disconnect can spell trouble for brands. The most polished advertising campaigns cannot make up for a frustrating customer interaction or a promise that a business cannot fulfill.

According to Ipsos’s internal research, many customers today see service as too automated and impersonal. More than half report that their experience is worse than promised.

These findings don’t just result in disappointed buyers. They result in lost customers, negative feedback, and a long-term impact on the business as a whole.

“Brands have to manage the entire customer experience across each and every touchpoint,” explains Christian.

Poor CX can be expensive

Executives can often underestimate how expensive a history of poor CX can be. Global losses can reach into the billions while leaders wonder what went wrong. In an age of rapid social media communication, a single negative interaction can spell disaster for a company, leading to reduced customer spending or the entire loss of its most loyal customers.

Those losses are not just reflected in lost revenue, however. Customer acquisition and marketing dollars can also be lost as companies continue to spend money trying to retain their customer base, often skipping right over the experience part of retention.

Poor customer experience can be a deep operating problem that creates a domino effect, decimating businesses from the inside out. These poor experiences can impact not only present and future customer acquisition but also business leaders and employees.

CX matters more in today’s business landscape

The customer experience has always mattered, but it may matter more to brands trying to make it in a modern, ultra-competitive, digitally-driven business landscape. Good experiences encourage repeat purchases, boost loyalty, and increase the likelihood that customers will go online and recommend a brand to others.

“Customer experience isn’t an isolated function,” says Christian. “It’s ‌part of a larger system that ensures that brands measure and manage customer experience data and then act on that data to drive action where customer experience gaps exist.”

Brands also have to seek to understand today’s customers, who expect experiences that are seamless, authentic, and relevant. As more and more companies hop on the automation train, they will want to reassure their customers that the human element that many people consider important still exists.

At Ipsos, six drivers of strong customer relationships form the bedrock of the company’s CX platform, something that they refer to as the “Forces of CX”: certainty, fair treatment, control, status, belonging, and enjoyment.

Customers want to feel that if they have an issue with a brand, it will be handled and that their concerns will be understood. They don’t want the customer experience to feel like a battleground; they want it to feel fair and human.

“Customer experience isn’t just a nicer experience,” says Christian. “It ties directly to specific financial outcomes, whether that be increased sales, greater market share, or stronger brand loyalty.”

How Ipsos helps businesses deliver customer experiences that matter

Ipsos turns customer feedback into reliable, actionable, decision-ready information. The company goes beyond simple satisfaction metrics and implements voice-of-the-customer programs, journey analytics, relationship feedback, and quality research.

“Brands don’t just need data,” Christian says. “They need measurements as to how they are delivering on their brand promise and predictive modeling to tie financial performance measures to those measures to help them determine where to invest to maximize the customer experience and understand what financial impact those investments might deliver for the business.”

Ipsos measures the interactions that matter ‌most and shows brands how each interaction can affect retention, share of spend, and efficiency. For brands that are trying to reduce the guesswork behind CX, Ipsos helps them move beyond cosmetic fixes to achieve real, meaningful change.

Customer expectations can shift on a dime, influenced by society, social media, and even changing trends. Ipsos helps brands meet those rapidly changing customer expectations with hard evidence and comprehensive metrics.

Today’s brands need to understand how to get the customer experience right. Ipsos has the insights needed to drive home the deep importance of CX in today’s marketplace.