Voxmedya team continues the interview series with leading names of the digital marketing sector with Onur Özcan that one of the first names that come to mind when it comes to programmatic.
Onur Özcan has been interested in the Internet since his high school years and after he became the Digital Marketing Manager of iProspect company in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and content, he went to the Programmatic field of the future in the digital marketing industry, and he shared his experiences with the industry as Programmatic Solution Manager at Amnet.
Özcan, who attracted attention with his posts on social media made important statements about the sector and his field to Voxmedya team who set off with the idea of using the vast experience of the industry leaders and knowing that his knowledge is a treasure.
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# Who is Onur Özcan? Can you talk about yourself to get to know you closely?
# Why digital marketing industry? What excited and inspired you to enter this industry?
# How is your working order, how do you plan your time and how can you stay up-to-date?
Voxmedya: First of all, thank you very much for accepting our interview offer. Without any expectation, they will come after you with the motto “It increases as you share information” and this legacy you will leave to people like us in the sector will be very useful for us in the name of motivation and inspiration.
Onur: Thank you very much for your invitation and for this special article series that I personally enjoyed reading. In parallel with your motto, I have a newsletter where I share my individual experiences as much as possible. I sometimes share similar posts on Twitter.
I think that the digital marketing experts in our country are not much different in terms of knowledge and experience, even from a technical point of view, because of my experience from other agencies with which we cooperate abroad. Unlike them, however, there is laziness and abstaining in sharing. I would also like to thank you for ensuring that this handicap was overcome with such interviews.
Voxmedya: Who is Onur Özcan? Can you talk about yourself to get to know you closely?
Onur: Sure. I was born in Sarıyer in October 1989. That’s why I had a pleasant childhood that I spent mainly on the sea and gardens.
I have been curious since childhood and treated technology products with admiration. My first computer was a second-hand Apple. “What’s in this tool?” On the day of my absence, I took the piece apart with a screwdriver and took it out of the trash device.
After that, I did not have a computer for a long time. I would attend online domino tournaments in the internet cafes with aunts and uncles who had turned the average age of 70 in the evenings. In one corner, while the Moonstar dictionary translated clear correspondence, my interest in foreign language increased. My education life took shape in this direction and I completed my university life as a language/literature graduate.
The university has become a personal development school for me. Studying philosophical and literary works for 4 years, reading novels, poems different myths from world literature contributed tremendously to my intellectual development. Of course, these were not profitable jobs contrary to the training of digital branches. My comfort here was that I had discovered the internet and income models from the end of high school, and this was because I managed to constantly improve myself in this direction.
I read the university with pleasure, digestion since I have no worries about what to do after graduation.
Voxmedya: Why digital marketing industry? What excited and inspired you to enter this industry?
Onur: I actually entered the sector without realizing it. In order to add a big choice to that Whopper menu in high school, I was constantly tiring to give my family reasons to renew my 1000 SMS package in order not to think twice as I approached the popcorn that was dizzy with the smell in the cinema, but on the other hand, I needed more money 🙂
While looking for ways to make money from the internet one day like 2006-2007, I came across “get paid to surf/read“, which means pay per reading or site surfing systems. When I realized that I had to work more than a month to earn $10 from here, I told my close friends to include my friends and relatives first and get a commission from their earnings. So I discovered Affiliate Marketing without realizing it.
What I have included in the system did not work when I realized that they had to refute a great time to make money from here.
Because the system sends you a link and you have to stay at this link for 45 seconds. When you scroll to a different application on the desktop, the counter stops. So you have to be actively on that page.
As a result, you earn $0.01. The number of links sent to you is already limited. You have to spend more than 1 month to earn $ 10, no need. So people demotivated and dropped the system.
Of course, although I have exhausted my close circle, I did not quit. As a result, I worked hard, even if it was $1.
Then I learned to set up a website, thinking that I would reach the whole internet. I opened my first site from Google’s service Blogspot and listed my reference links on the site.
We set up the site, everything is fine but there is no incoming and outgoing :’)
I can not think than how to get traffic, I was thinking the job is over when I set up the site. Again, I was unaware of AdWords until 2008, and Facebook ads are not available anyway. I discovered SEO while researching in foreign sources. I read, learned, and practiced in depth. But what I learned would not work on this site, and then it would drag me into different worlds 🙂
So nothing happened that guided me or inspired. I just wanted to be able to order that Whopper oversized, as a result of which I laid the foundations for SEO, affiliate, and content marketing.
Voxmedya: Could you please share the story of DomainPromo.com, which is your “playground” after your university?
Onur: Actually, it is my playground, there is a lot of work in the background. Because people who know from social media say what are you doing, they wonder. Or they’re looking at LinkedIn to find out. I just put it there so they say, “So there was something like that.”
Actually, there are many stories to tell. As in the previous question, I do not want to tell the audience deeply and bore the readers. I founded Turkey’s first discount coupon site at the university. At that time, when you asked Google as a “discount coupon”, it was correcting as a “claim coupon”. It was a very pristine internet industry discount coupon for consumption in Turkey.
The Turkish site with at that time Europe’s largest affiliate network Zanox German by Turkey’s something I’ve chosen the most successful affiliate publishers. They invited to Germany and when I was 22, I entered a nice networking environment. From there, we are still in contact with some contacts, moreover.
So my playground was then this Turkish discount coupon site. However, I always had different playgrounds before.
I mean from my playground: I had a good or bad website. I have already had specific experiences in different areas, from Google Analytics to Facebook Ads and SEO, while thinking about how I drive organic traffic or how I buy traffic from paid search / social channels, measure the quality of the traffic I receive, and optimize these channels.
Therefore, if you are interested in digital marketing, you must have a site and a playground where you can experience what you have learned, discovered, or thought through trial and error.
Voxmedya: As far as we know, you are currently working in the Amnet company. Can you tell us about your working conditions and the work you do there?
Onur: Amnet is a multinational agency that provides programmatic media purchase support to global brands that we all use or consume today, with nearly 30 offices worldwide. Today, we are connected to the same umbrella company, Dentsu Aegis Network, with iProspect, which many of us are familiar with.
We are currently 4 people in Istanbul. I have been at Amnet for 3 years. I was in iProspect before. My friend who handed me this job before me was still in Budapest Amnet, and my friend who taught him the job was in London Amnet until a while ago.
Likewise, Amnet has a global network that is open to development and initiative, which integrates from the Sydney office to the New York office, where everyone conveys their knowledge and experience, and where current documents and documents are shared and case studies are handled. Individually, this is a very satisfying situation for me. Sometimes I spend my hours in the office examining presentations, case-studies of other offices. In this sense, the company offers a good opportunity for learning.
‘I work as a Programmatic Solutions Manager in the Istanbul office. Here I am interested in the discovery and testing of different data sources, programmatic purchasing technologies, and creative formats. I am also interested in the programmatic media purchases of the brands that I am responsible for.‘
To mention the working conditions, we have a flexible and pleasant working environment in Istanbul. We have human resources that pay attention to work-life balance and managers who are more concerned with the outcome than the process.
Voxmedya: As we wonder, we think that people have question marks about this issue. Could you inform us about the Programmatic area you are currently working as a competent person? How do you define Programmatic?
Onur: If you look at the descriptions of programmatic buying on the Internet, you can discover various definitions. However, all of these circulate around technology, automation and data, and audience reach. Therefore, to summarize, we can define programmatic as a more effective and automated form of advertisement purchase by making use of technology and data.
While media acquisition is a job that requires more human interaction and workforce, programmatic reception allows you to manage, monitor, and optimize the entire process in a consolidated way from a single panel by minimizing human interaction. Moreover, you do not need the initiative of the channel you advertise as much as before. 💪
“Will the budget change, frequencies will be updated, broadcast time intervals, days will change or different data segments or even creatives have been decided? You can activate all of them by updating them instantly from your own panel in seconds. “
Now, of course, these programmatic platforms provide media buying power beyond standard banner or video ads. It enables target audience access in many different formats and platforms, from digital outdoor (DOOH) advertisements to television commercials (internet-connected TVs) and audio advertisements in online radio and stream services (TuneIn, Spotify, SoundCloud). Thus, you can display holistic insight and data from programmatic panels again.
Since these platforms are open to third parties and can work integrated with them, it seems that most of the advertising panels that we have entered separately in the future will be integrated into them.
Voxmedya: How do you see the future of the industry with the widespread use of technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, internet of things? What is Programmatik’s position in this area?
Onur: Someone who used Facebook or Google platforms for a minimum of 3-4 years today directly observed the point of machine learning. While it was necessary to make reports and analyze several times in order to catch certain KPIs in the past, today we can give platforms the time we call “learning time” to capture most of these KPIs. In fact, here, “learning time” is directly meant machine learning. That’s why machine learning is directly reflected in our work. We just tell the machine what we want. The machine is also tried, if our requests are attainable level, it continues. If not, he says it is not and asks us to come with more “reasonable” demands. Isn’t it amazing?
You already have an Analytics code and a Like button on each site today? Each phone has at least one Facebook application or direct Google’s Android system. Huge data is collected from many different sources. That is why they know more about what people are more likely to buy and how they browse the internet. Accordingly, they make us targetable 🙂
Artificial intelligence is also a different matter. Currently, for example, Amnet has several artificial intelligence-based projects conducted by R&D teams globally. Of course, the details will be announced by themselves, of course, but they give great results in test studies with different sectors. All of this is possible with the ability of programmatic platforms to integrate and develop with 3rd party technologies, as I mentioned in the previous question.
There are also different bid engines and budget management technologies integrated with these platforms in the market. Therefore, those who purchase programmatic media, in particular, can experience the progress of artificial intelligence and machine learning more closely.
Augmented reality seems to be a different ad inventory in the future. In other words, if you are labeled as “tea lover” in various data sources, you can see tea ads in a virtual world or real-world billboards when you wear your AR / VR glasses. Similarly, if you are a coffee machine, you may see coffee commercials. If Google Glass continued, it was likely to happen slowly.
I think the Internet of Things (IoT) will continue as a data source for us. For example, in a refrigerator you will buy, we will allow access to data, as we did on Facebook and other platforms, to enable various features or access relatively cheap. Then, when the number of carbonated drinks in the cupboard decreases, we will see carbonated beverage campaigns on the Internet. Or we will be divided into sections as “regular carbonated drink buyers” and we will target internet beverage brands in carbonated beverage brands. IoT will develop in this way. We will enter our kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and share data with them all the time.
Voxmedya: When we have the opportunity to talk with our seniors in the industry, we see how important it is to manage time and use time effectively. How is your working order, how do you plan your time and how can you stay up-to-date?
Onur: I like being in life. I spend time with my family and animals in my garden, I go to the gym and then I sit in a cafe for a long time. At noon, I contract with someone from the industry and have lunch, and sometimes I visit shops in the neighborhood. In other words, I spend time with different people in places with different socioeconomic and cultural status. This is not because I want it like this, but because my environment has always been developed this way. On the other hand, I consume articles on different topics. So working during the day is not my priority, unless there is an exceptional situation and not my office day. This is feeding me spiritually and spiritually.
The working hour of the evening starts after eating my last meal. I clean my to-do first, check my projects, and update my to-do in the meantime. I usually am on the laptop until about 2 at night. However, this may change depending on what I do during the day.
In summary, I can not say that “I spend 5 hours a day to work, measure and optimize my time with Time Doctor and various Pomodoro applications, half an hour before I work to consume papaya and avocado smoothie” 🙂 My priority during the day is myself if I say ok I open and work. I work at night, but my working time is generally proportional to my to-do and daytime activity.
The only channel I follow to stay up to date is Twitter. I follow the right accounts there. I review the articles or twits that are on my homepage and interest me, or save them as a bookmark for later review.
Voxmedya: Finally, what advice would you give to juniors who have just stepped into the industry and digital marketing enthusiasts working in the sector?
Onur: Humble, my priority advice is to learn English well. There is no need to explain the reasons for this anymore. Do not overwhelm yourself with sectoral resources and business life. Go read the classics, read poetry, cinema reviews, articles on different subjects. Gain different views and perspectives so that you are always open to development and learning.
I recommended it at the beginning of the interview, you should definitely have one website for additional income independent of your standard business. Let this be your playground as I mentioned before. For example, try to add any Analytics event here, apply SEO, try to attract traffic from Facebook to Pinterest. Or implement a technique you read in a foreign source here. Let this be your application area. In this way, you will increase your self-confidence and differentiation in the industry.
“Finally, as far as I can now observe individually, Javascript is pretty much needed. The main reason for this is PWA (Progressive Web Apps). Naturally, it is necessary to know Javascript in order to properly index sites created with PWA to Google or to measure the site created with any infrastructure more effectively with Google Analytics and similar measurement tools. Therefore, learning and developing Javascript and its needs in digital marketing will bring great advantage in the long run.”
The original of this interview was published in Turkish in April 2019 in Voxmedya.com.
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