Affise: Empowering brands to create effective partnerships with Google Cloud
About Affise
Affise aims to help brands reach consumers in a more effective and meaningful way. Founded in 2016, the company is based on a “cost per action” approach and enables companies to partner with influencers, publishers, and B2B partners with no third-party input. Affise currently employs more than 200 people across the world and recently secured $8 million in Series A funding.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact usAffise migrated to Google Cloud to lower costs, deploy new products faster, and provide customers with a secure platform for their data.
Google Cloud results
- Meets and goes beyond clients’ stringent security requirements
- Enabled a seamless, timely migration
- Supports new product launches with faster time-to-market
Supports customer needs with a scalable, safe platform
When it comes to marketing, partnerships can be highly beneficial. According to recent research, mature partnership programs can enable companies to grow their revenue almost twice as fast. But in the digital era, setting up and managing effective partnerships can be a daunting prospect.
"Potential partners can take many forms: social media influencers, ambassadors, loyalty programs, app-to-app integrations, affiliate networks, and more. Our mission is to make setting up and managing partnerships simple," says Dmitri Zotov, Chief Technical Officer and Founder, Affise.
Based in Lithuania, Affise offers a range of solutions that enable brands to implement, manage, and monitor marketing partnerships without input from a third-party. Affise migrated to Google Cloud in January 2022 to ground its solutions in a stable, scalable platform that met its customers’ stringent security requirements, and cut down its traffic costs.
Grounding innovation in a stable, cost-effective platform
"Partner marketing can be complex and requires a lot of resources, but the rewards can be far higher than via traditional marketing channels," says Zotov. "We provide solutions that help brands manage those relationships more effectively in order to focus on their core business, whether it’s app development, eCommerce, gaming or something else."
Affise’s all-in-one partner marketing ecosystem aims to enable marketing teams to connect with potential partners, automate workflows and monitor and analyze data. Founded in 2016, Affise stands out through its outcome-based approach: rather than impressions or clicks, brands pay only for conversions. According to Zotov, this system provides customers with greater transparency and aligns better with their business goals.
"Our main aim in migrating to Google Cloud was to better manage our traffic costs, but it’s turned out to be a game-changer on several different levels. Not only are we paying less for traffic, we’re also more scalable and secure and are able to deliver new products faster."
—Dmitri Zotov, Chief Technical Officer and Founder, Affise"Affise covers the cost of clicks, while customers only pay for actual, tangible outcomes such as sales or downloads," Zotov says. "Google Cloud gave us access to cost-efficient and scalable network egress, and provided the whole ecosystem we needed."
The company’s previous set-up was a bare metal, on-premises infrastructure combined with some cloud services, which just wasn’t cost-efficient. "Our main aim in migrating to Google Cloud was to better manage our traffic costs," says Zotov. "But it’s turned out to be a game-changer on several different levels. Not only are we paying less for traffic, we’re also more scalable and secure and are able to deliver new products faster."
Enabling faster and more efficient deployment
The migration began in January 2022 and was completed on time six months later. "It was a complex process that involved restructuring a certain number of our services," Zotov says, "But the Google Cloud team was helpful and supportive throughout the process and available 24/7 to answer any questions and help us navigate any challenges."
"We’re constantly working to improve and diversify the products we offer our customers, and Google Kubernetes Engine enables us to test and deploy new features more easily."
—Dmitri Zotov, Chief Technical Officer and Founder, AffiseAffise’s ecosystem is based on three different products: Affise Performance, Affise Reach and Affise Attribution, which respectively enable marketers to manage campaigns, recruit new partners and measure mobile performance. Added to this, the company offers verticals geared towards specific industries, such as retail, online dating, agencies and gaming.
"We’re constantly working to improve and diversify the products we offer our customers, and Google Kubernetes Engine enables us to test and deploy new features more easily," Zotov says. The migration to Google Cloud has enabled Affise to launch a new product specifically aimed at SaaS companies. "It's very important to be scalable nowadays, because of ever-changing customer and market needs," Zotov continues. Affise is currently working with Cloud Run, Cloud SQL and Compute Engine, and looks forward to implementing further Google Cloud solutions in the future.
"Security was another major reason we opted for Google Cloud," says Zotov, "Our customers’ data is hugely important to us and we apply a zero-trust policy. We work with up to 20 other service providers and need to be able to easily manage access to specific resources. To do that, we use Identity and Access Management".
Looking forward to an increasingly international future
It’s early days, but the Affise team has already observed significant improvements with regards to stability and reliability since the migration. "I’m one of those people who checks their emails first thing, and when we were using an on-premises system I was used to waking up to a series of error messages. Since the migration, I have gone for weeks without getting a single one. You could say Google Cloud has improved my sleep!" Zotov says.
"Google Cloud provides us with the ongoing support and tools we need to grow our business and achieve our goals."
—Dmitri Zotov, Chief Technical Officer and Founder, AffiseAffise has a widespread and diverse customer base, something Zotov looks forward to reinforcing in the future. "Our solutions are for everyone, whether it’s small Eastern European marketing agencies, startups in emerging markets or NYSE-listed companies," he says, "Our customer base goes from Southeast Asia to San Francisco. That’s a lot of territory to cover, and Google Cloud locations makes it a lot easier by enabling us to choose where we locate our servers, while providing the stability and reliability our customers need."
Affise is looking forward to opening up new business opportunities by making its solutions available on the Google Cloud Marketplace. "Google Cloud provides us with the ongoing support and tools we need to grow our business and achieve our goals," Zotov concludes.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Affise
Affise aims to help brands reach consumers in a more effective and meaningful way. Founded in 2016, the company is based on a “cost per action” approach and enables companies to partner with influencers, publishers, and B2B partners with no third-party input. Affise currently employs more than 200 people across the world and recently secured $8 million in Series A funding.