Adjust’s Ozan Sisman Cooks Up Successful Mobile Marketing Partnerships

Ozan Sisman, Partnership Manager at Adjust, is a unique combination of numbers and sociability.

With a passion for math, Ozan studied industrial engineering at one of the most reputable colleges in Turkey. His journey into mobile began with his internship at Rocket Internet, where he first got into the online ecosystem. Though he dipped his toes in a few other industries, his heart was always with the digital world. A few years ago, an online article that he read inspired him to get into the digital media marketing sector. “Mobile marketing really caught my eye, and I love it,” Ozan says.

When the opportunity presented itself, Ozan joined one of the biggest digital media agencies in Turkey. While he started as an analyst, he quickly found that his communication skills were tailor-made for a sales position. He worked at other companies until he co-founded his own marketing agency, learning new things every step of the way. But mobile specifically is what has always excited him most.

A year ago, Ozan was offered his role at Adjust. Adjust is a global app marketing analytics platform committed to ensuring the highest privacy and performance standards for clients. Adjust’s solutions include attribution and measurement, fraud prevention, cybersecurity and automation tools. The company’s mission is to make mobile marketing simpler, smarter and more secure for the more than 50,000 apps who work with them.

The Partnerships team at Adjust focuses predominantly on relationship management. In working closely with the Integration, Product, Marketing and Sales teams, Ozan and the team work to educate their partners, build collaborative relationships and strengthen Adjust’s market position. Their mission is to ensure the adoption of Adjust’s technology and solutions among their partners and to elevate their relationships with major platforms, ad networks and agencies.

“As an industrial engineer who loves numbers and as a social person who loves communication, it’s a great position for me to combine my math background with the social aspects of sales.”

It’s been a bit of an unpredictable year. From an MMP perspective, what are some key trends that you noticed? Were there any interesting trends that surprised you?

COVID-19 had an enormous impact on the app economy over the last year, accelerating growth across verticals, as people turned to mobile for a broader range of activities.

From entertainment and e-commerce to fitness and finance, a key trend we identified is that users are more likely than ever before to spend on subscriptions. Recent research conducted by Adjust found that Gen Z and Millennials spend an average of $25.85 USD a month globally and that many have even stopped paying for services like gym memberships in order to buy app subscriptions.

What advice would you give someone looking for a mobile marketing partner?

There are three key things that are essential when looking for an MMP: unlimited access to attribution data, proactive fraud prevention – not just detection – and high-quality support.

Mobile attribution is the cornerstone of any good user acquisition strategy, providing marketers with the intelligence and data visibility necessary to drive campaign and budget decisions.

When it comes to mobile ad fraud, most providers offer some kind of anti-fraud product, but many solutions are short of a robust toolkit that focuses on prevention. This means they are reactive – they don’t prevent fraud but only provide you with the information on whether fraud took place. Without proactive prevention, data sets will be ruined by the presence of fraudulent activity.

In addition to attribution and fraud prevention, what our customers really love about Adjust is the quick turnaround our expert support team offers – where we aim not only to solve problems but to educate our clients across the globe, in 17 languages.

iOS 14 is on the horizon, what steps do you suggest developers and advertisers to take in order to gain user trust? What are the most important things to keep in mind when preparing for this release?

The most important thing for developers to do in preparation for iOS 14 is to define their UX strategy and design persuasive internal prompts to request consent prior to triggering the iOS pop-up. At Adjust, we refer to this as the ‘pre-permission prompt’, which can be customized, designed and worded to perfectly fit your app.

We recommend that developers start by creating a map of their users’ micro-behaviors. For a gaming app, for example, this could be the journey to an in-app purchase. The prompt should clearly tell users that they should give consent, how to do so, and what the advantages are. You should keep the screen clean, straightforward and aesthetically pleasing, pointing directly to the opt-in. It’s also vital to always be as transparent as possible.

The next important step in gaining user trust is to create an A/B testing strategy. We recommend A/B testing your opt-in message together with GDPR privacy notices, presented as a standalone message. You can then build out the first set of results by introducing further variables. For example, if a bundled privacy notice is more successful, you can then test different designs and copy. To learn more in-depth tips, and how to navigate user attitudes towards data privacy, you can take a look at our iOS 14 guide to securing the opt-in, here.

You can also tune into Adjust’s webinar with yellowHEAD, Storemaven and Playtika to learn more about Mobile UA Post-IDFA.

As a proud Adjust Solution Partner ourselves, we know about the advantages of the program, but could you share with our readers some of the perks & capabilities, and how others can benefit from this program?

Initially launched in 2017 – the longest-running partner certification in the mobile measurement space – we relaunched ASPP in June 2020. With a new tier system designed to better reflect the individual requirements of our partner agencies, we’ve since welcomed 42 agencies into the program and have seen 151 people complete the course and receive certification.

The ASPP program grants access to an online learning portal where partners can access courses. The detail provided in the program has empowered many of our partner agencies to undertake a new way of working – leading to breakthroughs in the kinds of strategies they’re able to build and understand. Clients whose teams have completed certification report that they’re now better able to tackle new challenges, add value to their own clients, and develop better creatives for campaigns – all thanks to the resources, industry insights and knowledge provided.

Ad Fraud Prevention is one of your USPs. What steps do you think developers should take in order to protect their app from malicious fraud?

When left unchecked, ad fraud can derail your entire acquisition strategy, steal from ad budgets and render data sets unusable. Instead of focusing on reacting to fraud, developers need to prevent it from happening in the first place. The only way to do this is with real-time rejection, as opposed to an “after-the-fact” approach. With software like Adjust’s Fraud Prevention Suite, developers are provided with comprehensive ad fraud protection that proactively stops fraud before it happens.

On a personal note, when you’re not busy measuring data or protecting the mobile world from fraud, what is your passion?

I love cooking for people. Before the pandemic, I was taking culinary courses like the Gordon Ramsay masterclass to improve my cooking skills. My most recent attempt is a Beef Wellington:

I also love basketball; watching or playing – they are both great to me.

What advice would you give someone who is just entering the mobile marketing field?

Mobile marketing is a great field to work in. There are tons of very good companies that have different areas of expertise. Firstly, I would definitely support them as our industry always needs talented and dedicated people. Secondly, regardless of their position, I would advise them to read/research as much as they can and attend online webinars about the topic they are interested in.

What is your golden tip?

We always talk about the importance of data and information. For me, what is more important is keeping the clean data which I can analyze and then make decisions accordingly. It is not only important for companies, but also for our daily lives. I always try to make decisions based on data that I keep. It does not mean that my emotions do not affect my decisions; it means I have learned to take my emotions into account as a data point.