Ividence: Helping publishers spread the word across the world with Google Cloud
About Ividence
Based in France, Ividence - subsidiary of Dekuple Group - provides major editorial publishers from around the world with solutions that enable them to monetize their newsletters with highly personalized, brand-safe advertising content.
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About Stack Labs
Stack Labs aims to focus on technical excellence and knowledge sharing to address the new challenges of the cloud, security and data.
In order to provide a secure and stable platform with robust multi-region availability while developing its AI-enhanced services, Ividence decided to migrate to Google Cloud.
Google Cloud results
- Opens new avenues for international growth with multi-region architecture
- Protects client ad revenues by ensuring 99.95% availability
- Protects brand image with AI-powered image detection, allowing ads to be screened for inappropriate content
Delivers image display in 200 milliseconds globally
Social media trends may come and go, but the newsletter seems to be here to stay. Newsletters in one form or another have been around since 15th century Venice, when subscribers would receive twice-weekly handwritten missives about upcoming events in their area. Nowadays, newsletters enable organizations to communicate directly with their core audiences about important updates, new products, special offers or recently-published content they may find of interest.
Founded in 2008, the French marketing technology company Ividence - subsidiary of Dekuple Group- offers newsletter monetization solutions for major editorial brands. "We focus entirely on email newsletters, enabling publications to generate advertising revenue as well as promote their content," says Éric Prigent, COO of Ividence. Based in Paris, the company collaborates with nearly all the major French editorial publishers alongside several others in Europe, Asia, South America and the Middle East.
By 2019, it was clear that Ividence’s existing infrastructure needed a major overhaul. In order to provide its customers with a stable platform and AI-enhanced services that would enable them to boost their revenue while ensuring brand safety, Ividence worked with Google Premier Partner Stack Labs to migrate to Google Cloud since 2019.
"Working with Google Cloud, especially on multi-region solutions, means we can provide uniform response times, regardless of where users and customers are located. We can now deliver image display times of 200 milliseconds."
—Éric Prigent, COO, IvidenceIn search of a stable, secure, globally-distributed platform
One incentive for the migration to an entirely cloud-based architecture was a new partnership with Outbrain, a globally recognized content discovery platform. "The partnership was a big part of our decision to move to Google Cloud, as it required a multi-region architecture," explains Prigent. "Working with Google Cloud, especially on multi-region solutions, means we can provide uniform response times, regardless of where users and customers are located. We can now deliver image display times of 200 milliseconds."
Previously, the company had been based on a hybrid cloud architecture that combined services from other providers with tools from Google, such as the open-source container technology Kubernetes. Using Google Kubernetes Engine, Ividence could reduce the operational overhead of its existing Kubernetes services, without disrupting the way it worked. "Native support for Kubernetes facilitated the migration considerably," explains Eric Prigent. "Google Kubernetes Engine was a major reason we decided to opt for Google Cloud."
Ividence was also in need of a platform that provided exemplary availability: "Every lost minute is lost advertising revenue," says Eric Prigent, "We work with complex software architectures and when things break down, it's not always easy to identify the problem. A major objective of the migration was to improve our availability rate, avoid losing money and facilitate maintenance." Since the migration, the company has observed 99.95% availability: "Moving to Google Cloud enabled us to free up bandwidth for our teams, improve code stability and identify problems more easily."
"Native support for Kubernetes facilitated the migration considerably. Google Kubernetes Engine was a major reason we decided to opt for Google Cloud."
—Éric Prigent, COO, IvidenceUsing AI to optimize newsletter revenue
The nature of email newsletters implies major traffic peaks at certain times of day. "People tend to open newsletters in the morning while they’re having their coffee, and again in the evening," Prigent says, "this means that we have traffic spikes twice a day, which coincides with many editorial publishing schedules. Autoscaling enables us to keep the service available through peak times."
Ividence makes use of artificial intelligence to maximize the value of its advertising services by increasing the click-through rate of its campaigns. "We build prediction models that allocate impressions to advertisers that are more likely to generate clicks," explains Eric Prigent, "Our models take into account around 60 parameters and run every two hours, integrating feedback loops from past impressions and then recalculating the predictions as we go along." The strategy takes into account the time of days, the location and the device used. To do this, the company uses BigQuery alongside Cloud Bigtable, Looker Studio and Dataflow.
"We were in search of a provider with strong AI credentials, who could help us upskill and create a solid basis for future projects. Google Cloud with Stack Labs support ticks all those boxes. We’re excited to see where we can go next."
—Éric Prigent, COO, IvidenceLooking to the future with Cloud Vision API
Ividence expects to explore even more AI tools to expand its offerings and improve its services. "We’re working closely with Google on a certain number of new products," Prigent explains, "A major ongoing project involves using Vertex AI and Vision AI to ensure brand safety." Brand safety, or protection of the image and reputation of companies that advertise online, is a major concern for advertising platforms. "Newsletters are a fundamental aspect of a company’s brand communications, as people have explicitly opted in to receive them. Companies trust us with their editorial reputation, and we have to ensure that the adverts we provide are appropriate," Prigent says. In order to better protect the brands it works with, Ividence is developing a product that uses Cloud Vision API to automatically detect and remove potentially inappropriate or sensitive content. Another project in the pipeline adapts advertising images and text to specific style guides to further reduce friction for publishers.
"We were in search of a provider with strong AI credentials and a partner who could help us upskill and create a solid basis for future projects. Google Cloud with Stack Labs support ticks all those boxes. We’re excited to see where we can go next," Prigent concludes.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Ividence
Based in France, Ividence - subsidiary of Dekuple Group - provides major editorial publishers from around the world with solutions that enable them to monetize their newsletters with highly personalized, brand-safe advertising content.
About Stack Labs
Stack Labs aims to focus on technical excellence and knowledge sharing to address the new challenges of the cloud, security and data.