How can you manage your digital ads more efficiently?

What is WASK? How was it set up? Who can use it? Where is the future of digital advertising going? We had a pleasant conversation on all these questions.
RADAAR: Hello everyone. Welcome to our Radaar program where we talk about the work they carry out with digital marketing professionals. I am Ayşegül from RADAAR. Our guest today is Ercan Pilcioğlu, the founder of Wask. Welcome Mr. Ercan. First of all, RADAAR: Talks. Thank you very much for being our guest at Talks. Our daily routines have changed a lot due to the pandemic. How are you doing during this period?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Hello Ayşegül again. I'm fine thank you very much. I hope you are fine too. In the first place, we were in an effort to continue our activities by taking maximum precautions during the pandemic process. We had some activities to turn this into an opportunity. There have been some improvements. Of course we wouldn't want it to happen at all; but we had this process very productive and healthy. I hope it will continue to be like this in the upcoming processes.

RADAAR: We will talk about Wask in great detail, but before we move on to him, I want to get to know you a little bit. Who is Ercan Pilcioğlu? What did you do before Wask? Shall we talk about it briefly?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Of course. I'm Ercan Pilcioğlu. I'm 30 years old. For about 12 years, I have served companies at the point of information technology and digital consultancy. We were working with them by providing consultancy to companies regarding these needs. Later, some needs, some problems came to the agenda, some of the problems both the industry and I faced. Based on these problems, I decided to establish Wask ?? If you wish, I will get to that side quickly.

RADAAR: Of course.

Ercan Pilcioğlu: In summary, Wask is a…. That provides easier, easier and smarter management of digital advertising accounts from a single platform. Platform. In the digital world, there are approximately 13 million users who place digital advertisements in total. And these users give their digital ads from Facebook, Instagram, Google. However, while doing this ad management, they encounter some problems while giving their advertisements. Some of them are Ayşegül: If there is more than one advertising account, this user has to manage their advertising accounts in many different channels. Since beginner users who do not have much technical knowledge are not very successful in interpreting data, they are unfortunately unable to get healthy results from their spending by having problems at the point of advertising optimization. We, too, enable the management of all advertising accounts, be it Facebook, Instagram or Google, from a single platform, allow ads to be optimized with smarter features, scheduling ads with the timer feature, self-management with autopilot feature and more economical at the point of budget management. We built a software that enables it to take actions. Our company was incorporated and established in 2018. We received a seed investment from Tarvenn Ventures in 2018. Until 2 months ago, we announced that we received a different investment from Tekvan. In short, this is Ayşegül.

RADAAR: Thank you for your explanation. So actually you just mentioned. Wask now allows us to easily manage the ads we manage on different platforms on a single platform. So who is Wask more for? So for businesses that just want to manage their own ads? Or can the professionals serving this job also use it?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: That is, anyone who advertises digitally can use our software. The problems that every digital advertiser has already experienced are often common problems. Starting from the issues I just mentioned, beginner users have little technical knowledge, so they cannot exactly predict where to place the ad, with which strategy they will give it, and how much they will spend. In this case, beginner users have to manage their ads manually. But we say, "You manage your ads within Wask software, save money, spend less, optimize your ads more and get more clicks, gain more customers." We contact them. At the same time, professional digital agencies or professional advertisers who manage large numbers of advertisements can use our advertising platform very comfortably. For example, a digital agency that manages digital advertisements of 100 companies has to use many different tools at the point of reporting, at the point of measurement of advertisements, at the point of tracking performances or at the point of advertising. Those companies, those users, can manage more easily and quickly, whether 1, 100 or 1000 ad accounts within the Wask software.

RADAAR: Well, there are many different advertising models in question. Whether it is search ads, impression ads or remarketing… Of course, these differ according to platforms. Which advertising models can we manage with Wask?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: We are a platform that manages Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google ads, Youtube ads, and more recently Twitter and Linkedin ads. We will include Twitter and Linkedin in the near future. Within our software, you can post a post ad, story / story ad or similarly on Instagram, as well as publish search ads, visual ads or Youtube ads on Google, manage them from within and optimize them at the same time. You can manage digital advertising from such channels. The differences are as follows: The target audience is very important in digital advertisements. If your target audience is the right target audience, if you know who you advertise, your ads work much more optimized and much more useful. In order to understand this target audience, the user needs to take some technical actions inside. For example, if you have an e-commerce website and you want to attract users to this e-commerce website, gain customers and publish ads at the same time, let's assume that when you see the advertising results, when you examine the advertising results, for example, when you have 100 users going to your cart, there are 50 users who make the payment and complete the payment. The remaining 50 users either had a technical problem and left your website, or the amount in the basket was excessive, the shipping fee may have been excessive, or for any reason they left your website. You can also target users who go to the basket but do not make payment in Wask software and show them a discount coupon advertisement or take a different action. The more you manage your target audience in this sense, the more successful your recovery, your customers, and your costs will be managed accordingly. You can make such smart and optimized operations from these advertising channels in Wask software.

RADAAR: Fantastic! Well, when we examine Wask, we see that it offers some extra features that platforms such as timer, autopilot, target audience building do not offer. Would you like to mention them too? Actually, we talked about the target audience a little bit, but …

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Ok, let me go back to it. Digital ads are matters that require interest and relevance. In other words, “Let me publish the ad, let me set my budget, produce my content, have a certain target audience. Let these be published, and I will gain from here. " In the case you say, unfortunately, you cannot be successful. You need to pay special attention to advertisements. You have to follow the results and KPIs very well. You have to calculate your customer acquisition cost very well. You have to spend your time; but we all know that the most valuable thing in today's world is time. Wask offers some features to save you time. In other words, when you schedule your ad as "I do not want to close it myself in the future" or "I forget to close it", you can do some timer operations such as Start or Stop, Delete or Change Budget in the future with the timer feature. In autopilot, you can create some auto rules related to the costs and performance of your ads. Costs Per Click or Customer Acquisition Costs are very important in digital advertisements. If you cannot find the Costs Per Click or Customer Acquisition Costs you desire, at this point you can lower these costs by creating a rule with autopilot. In other words, when a Customer Acquisition Cost is 10 lira, you can close this ad, but when my Customer Acquisition Cost is 2 lira, you can create the necessary rules for the software to work fully automated, such as automatically increase the budget of this ad. For example, A / B Tests are very important in advertisements. If you run the ads and know which ad is successful, you can benefit more if you continue with the successful ad. Within the Wask platform, you can perform A / B tests between advertisements in the same medium or between advertisements in different channels. If you are also tracking conversions among Facebook ads, you can make A / B tests of the ads you give to Google with the ad you give to the Facebook side, and you can determine which platform you have gained more customers or convert more and invest more in that channel. There is also an artificial intelligence point in our software. I touched on the target audience side, I want to open it a little more. The target audience is a very important issue in advertisements. To whom do you want to show ads? Who can buy your products and services? Who can you interact with? You need to understand this first. It is always more advantageous to publish your ads in a smaller, familiar sea than to broadcast them in a very large ocean. Both in terms of costs and time. If you know where you advertise, if you know who sees your advertisements, and if you can follow how the people who click and see your ads take action, you are unlikely to be successful in digital advertisements. Therefore, the target audience is very important. So I underlined a little. If you are in Wask software, if you do not have much technical knowledge about the target audience or if you cannot get efficiency from the target audiences you have created, you can create more optimized, more accurate, more interesting target audiences by using Wask's artificial intelligence generator feature. Wask gives you the right target audience by examining your website and Instagram account. How does it do that too? When you save your website and Instagram address in the software, our algorithms first go to your website. It compiles the content there, collects it, takes the behavior of the visitors. She then goes to the Instagram side. It takes and interprets your content on Instagram. He comments on those who interact with you on Instagram. He is comparing the two. It takes the most optimized common aspects of the two and builds a target audience out of them. And if you advertise to this target audience, your Costs Per Click or Customer Acquisition Costs go down, so you can benefit more from the ads by spending less or spending the same amount, Ayşegül.

RADAAR: Yeah, very good. Well, speaking of artificial intelligence again, I want to squeeze the most curious question of all of us. Does Facebook listen to us, Mr. Ercan?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Facebook says it is not listening. But it would not be right to say anything about it. Facebook says it is not listening. I guess we have to believe him for now. What do you think about this issue?

RADAAR: So yes, we have to believe what they say.

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Okay.

RADAAR: When it comes to advertising, of course, evaluating the results becomes an integral part of it. With Wask, we think that we can report the results of the ads and even examine the ads comparatively. How is Wask facilitating this process? How do you elaborate on these?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: After the ads are broadcast, the process after the customers see the ad and interact with it, it is necessary to take new actions by examining and evaluating the ad results and performance. In this regard, digital advertisers were very complaining about the following: Unfortunately, they could not interpret the results well on complex screens in Facebook Ads panels or Google Ads panels. We have created interfaces that are very successful in User Experience in order to better interpret the results. Whether he is a very basic user or an advertiser who has just started digital ads, he can easily see the course of the ads by examining the indicators and examining the results without going into too much detail on those screens. Rather than using very complex screens, we show users the most essential data that advertisers need to see. And at the same time, we eliminate the reporting hassle. If you want to see the progress of your ads on the Facebook side or Google side, you need to take some actions and get some reports. If you have ads on both sides, you need to compare both the Google side and the Facebook side by making these reports on both sides and manually figure out which advertisement is successful based on the ad results; But at this point, Ayşegül, you can compare your ads more efficiently by getting your reports in a broad and detailed manner in a few steps in Wask software.

RADAAR: So, what kind of team do you develop all these features, Mr. Ercan? How many people does your team consist of? What positions are there?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Our team is a total of 9 people with me. We have two software developers. Our software developer working on Back-end and Front-end. We have graphic friends. We have friends who manage social media. We have math engineer development experts. Likewise, we have business development friends. We continue on our way with a total of 9 people.

RADAAR: How beautiful. So in what direction will Wask go in the near and distant future? What are Wask's and your goals?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Currently, Wask has more than 20,000 users in 164 different countries in total. In a short time, we reached quite a lot of countries and a satisfactory number of users. This is directly related to the growth of the digital advertising industry day by day and the increase in expenditures in this advertising world. Especially when the importance of digital ads and sales in digital channels emerged during pandemic processes, these expenditures increased even more. With each passing day, we have the chance to follow the importance of digital advertising, digital advertising management and the difficulties faced by digital advertisers much more clearly. We want to be one of the first companies to come to mind when it comes to digital advertising management, which facilitates the digital advertising management of people by reaching a much higher number of users in many more countries. The digital advertising world is very advanced in the current situation, a world where very successful transactions are made. It goes to a different place with new updates and new developments every day, every week, every month. Two years from now, five years from now, it will go to a very, very different place. In five years, we want Wask to be one of the first companies to come to mind by keeping up with these developments, regardless of where he goes.

RADAAR: So, what kind of marketing activities are you conducting to promote Wask?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Namely, we know the issues that digital advertisers experience the most problems. My background is digital marketing, as well as half of the team has a background in digital marketing. When we know very well the difficulties and problems encountered by digital advertisers in the advertising stage and interpret them, we start to produce organic content based on these issues. We want to provide benefits to people at this point by publishing organic content on our social media channels and blog pages very regularly. On the one hand, we reach users from there, advertisers. At the same time, we have advertisements that we broadcast globally. These are social media ads, Google ads, video content ads… We also have ads in many different channels. At the same time, we have e-bulletins and mailing, where we constantly keep in touch with users who come to us, users who use the software inside, and constantly publish sectoral developments. At this point, we reach the users and at this point we do our marketing. We do our digital marketing with our own software.

RADAAR: As someone who develops technology in this regard, how would you recommend advertisers to approach digital ads? So what kind of strategy do you think they will get more efficient results from the work they do?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: So, the most important factor in the digital advertising world is, I just touched on, to whom they broadcast the ad. One: to whom they broadcast the ad, Two: how people who interacted with the ad after publishing took action. If they can do both of these in a healthy way, digital advertisers are much more successful in advertisements and gain a much faster momentum. So you may be selling a service or a product; but first you need to know your target audience very well. You need to research where and how to catch your target audience, find the right audience and work with that target audience. In general, advertisers who are just starting advertising try to distribute a limited budget in a very large area. I humbly recommend that if they understand their target audience and use them in a smaller place, they will achieve a much faster development in digital ads if they can optimize the behaviors coming from the budgets they use and interpret the data well.

RADAAR: Finally, Ercan, where do you think digital ads will evolve in the future? What will we be talking about in this area in two years, five years, maybe ten years later?

Ercan Pilcioğlu: I mean, when I look at the digital advertising world ten years ago and compare it today, I especially see that there are incredible gigantic developments. Five years from now, developments will continue in the same way ten years from now; But these developments will be on the agenda at a much faster pace. Classic marketing methods, unfortunately, are preferred because digital marketing methods are more advantageous, classical marketing methods are less used and preferred. Therefore, digital ads will become much more optimized, much less automated systems where human intervention will be much less. In other words, digital advertisers will now give very little content while publishing digital ads. Perhaps they will no longer be a target audience. Algorithms, artificial intelligence algorithms, machines will now decide on them. The behavior of the people who see the ad, mouse movements, mobile application movements, finger movements can be interpreted much better and different actions can be taken at the next point of ad display. At the same time, I think there will be a lot of improvements in terms of television and media advertisements, I guess, I see that. End users, small businesses, advertisers who want to advertise on television will now be able to broadcast their advertisements by using certain software from the computer environment. The advertisements we see on television will be customizable advertisements like the ones we see on digital and social media. If I don't have a child, I won't see a diaper ad. If I am looking for a phone, I will see phone ads if I want to buy a new phone. I believe that television commercials will also be customizable at this point.

RADAAR: Mr. Ercan, thank you very much for taking the time for us and being a guest of Radaar: Talks. It was a very pleasant conversation for us. We hope it was enjoyable for you as well. It was very enjoyable to get to know Wask and you closely and to listen to your ideas and experiences. Thank you very much.

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Thank you very much for the invitation. I wish you success in this program. I will be following these conversations closely through the necessary channels. Thank you very much, take good care of yourself, please.

RADAAR: Thank you, take a good look. See you.

Ercan Pilcioğlu: Goodbye, thank you.

RADAAR: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of RADAAR: Talks. We hope you enjoyed it. You can access other episodes from Youtube or podcast applications such as Spotify, iTunes. Do not hesitate to contact us for your suggestions. See you in the next episode. Goodbye.