👋 About
Five years measuring what advertising actually returned — now building the systems that predict it.
At Havas Creative Network, Carat (dentsu) and Starcom MediaVest Group, media investment for Coca-Cola, Reckitt Benckiser and Ülker was planned, negotiated and defended against contractual KPIs. The work earned seven industry awards. What it taught was narrower and more durable: a number is only worth what its source can survive.
That principle now drives the technical work. A 3,000-hour Advanced Data Science and AI programme (Masterschool, completed July 2026) included a 320-hour industry internship at Huggin Munin / Agricom, where sole ownership of the intelligence layer of a production price-prediction pipeline meant delivering a 25-year EU market-shock retrospective, extending the automated validator from 17 to 29 rules, and identifying five classes of error that passed every mechanical check yet were substantively wrong.
Current focus: AdTech and MarTech — attribution, segmentation, churn, campaign measurement, and the forecasting systems underneath them.
🛠️ Technical & Strategic Toolkit
Data Science & ML:
Python (Pandas, NumPy, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow)
SQL (PostgreSQL)
Predictive Modeling
A/B Testing
Time Series Analysis
NLP
Computer Vision
Visualization:
TableauMatplotlibSeaborn
Strategy:
Media Mix Modeling
Media Planning
Consumer Behavior Analysis
Sentiment Analysis
AI & Tools:
Generative AI / LLMs
Prompt Engineering
LangChain
Streamlit
Git
Jupyter
PyCaret
📚 Selected Projects
Ranker AI — Brand Visibility in Generative Search
Brand intelligence platform measuring how brands surface inside AI answer engines. Mixture-of-Agents orchestration across 5 LLMs (GPT-4o, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Llama 3), an XGBoost scoring engine quantifying brand visibility and tone alignment, and embedding-based semantic drift detection. Deployed on AWS ECS Fargate with full CI/CD.
Resilient Customer Behavior Forecasting (Online Retail II)
Architected a Segment-Wise-Customer-Wise (SWCW) forecasting pipeline integrating CID clustering with a Hybrid RFM Bridge. Delivers high-fidelity CLV projections and inventory optimization using Linear Interpolation and Savitzky-Golay filtering.
Retail Sales Forecasting: Corporacion Favorita
Comprehensive Time Series Forecasting pipeline evaluating Prophet (MAPE 14.56%), SARIMA (RMSE 20.07), and XGBoost (RMSE 20.15) to optimize inventory management for Ecuador's largest grocery retailer.
TravelTide Customer Retention Mastery Project
Uncovered a "Weekend Effect" (+30% spend, +15% churn risk). Deployed K-Means Clustering to segment users into 3 personas: Weekend Whales, Window Shoppers, and Budget Commuters.
Disaster Tweet Classification — High-Precision NLP Pipeline
End-to-end SOTA NLP pipeline classifying whether tweets describe real disasters or hyperbolic language using TF-IDF and transformer-based classification.
DeepSight — Transfer Learning & Forensic Diagnostics
ResNet18 transfer learning on CIFAR-10, gated behind a 65% Minimum Viable Accuracy production threshold. Grad-CAM forensic error-analysis pipeline confirms the model attends to the object rather than the background — separating genuine signal from contextual bias and semantic ambiguity.
Media Science & Strategy Analytics Stack
SOTA statistical and ML methods for advertising, targeting Data Scientists, Media Planners, and AdTech Engineers. Includes Media Mix Modeling and marketing automation.
Coca-Cola 2020 Media Investment & Brand Strategy Analysis
Analyzed Coca-Cola's marketing resilience during COVID-19 using data science, econometrics, and Media Mix Modeling.
🐤 Experience
Data Scientist (Internship)
Huggin Munin Ltd. / Agricom · Remote · May 2026 – Jul 2026 · Kildare, Ireland
Sole owner of the intelligence layer feeding a production price-prediction pipeline. Delivered a 25-year (2001–2026) EU market-shock retrospective across 4 product categories, supplying the calibration anchors that scale every downstream forecast. Extended the automated validator from 17 to 29 rules and introduced a reproducibility invariant, closing a class of silent failures in which the pipeline reported success on data that had never been checked. Identified 5 distinct error classes that passed every automated check yet were substantively wrong. Shipped a 28-event structured corpus at a documented 23 PASS / 3 FAIL baseline.
Professional Development
Jun 2022 – Apr 2025 · Türkiye – Germany
Pivot from media measurement into data science, following completion of PhD coursework in Advertising (Bahcesehir University) and relocation to Germany. Structured upskilling in Python, SQL, statistics and applied machine learning — UC Berkeley (ML & AI Professional Certificate), IBM (Data Science Specialization), University of London — ahead of the Masterschool Advanced Data Science and AI programme.
Account Supervisor
Havas Creative Network · Full-time · Nov 2015 – Jan 2016 · Istanbul, Turkiye
Directed TV media strategies for Reckitt Benckiser multi-brand portfolio. Increased media efficiency by translating raw GRP data into actionable performance insights.
Executive Media Planner & Account Executive
Carat · Full-time · Nov 2012 – Nov 2015 · Istanbul, Turkiye
Engineered a custom Excel macro to automate spot broadcast reporting, improving workflow efficiency by 20%. Optimized multi-brand TV planning for The Coca-Cola Company.
Media Planner
Starcom MediaVest Group · Feb 2010 – Dec 2011
Led in-depth media and competitor analysis for Ulker (FMCG). Promoted to Lead TV Planner for 20+ national channels. Created a custom Excel-based "spot position calculator".
🎓 Education
Masterschool
Data Analytics — Advanced Data Science and AI (Completed)
3,000 teaching hours including a 320-hour industry internship. Machine Learning, Deep Learning, NLP & LLMs, Computer Vision, Time Series, Advanced SQL, Tableau, Generative AI.
Bahcesehir University
PhD in Advertising (coursework completed), Public Relations & Applied Communication · Sep 2017 – Jun 2022
Core coursework in attention-based advertising strategies, digital media behavior, and audience segmentation.
University of Bremen
Business & Managerial Economics — Erasmus Scholarship · Nov 2018 – May 2019
Semester abroad on an Erasmus scholarship, during PhD coursework in Advertising at Bahcesehir University.
Bahcesehir University
M.A. in Advertising & Brand Communication Management · Sep 2015 – Jun 2017
Thesis published as a book by Verlag Dr. Kovac (ISSN 1435-6651), with a Turkish edition by Artikel Yayincilik.
University of Valencia
Institute of Political Science — Erasmus Scholarship · Feb 2011 – Jul 2011
Semester abroad on an Erasmus scholarship, during undergraduate study at Koc University.
Koc University
Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) · Sep 2002 – Jun 2009
Foundation in economics, statistics and market analysis.
📝 Publications
The Effects of Internalized Homophobia upon Consumption Habits of LGB Individuals and Their Brand Attitudes
Applied Social Science Research, ISSN 1435-6651 · Verlag Dr. Kovac
An interdisciplinary study bridging psychology and marketing — revealing how identity, stigma, and consumption intersect for LGB individuals in Turkey.
Icsellestirilmis Homofobinin LGB Bireylerin Tuketim Aliskanliklar ve Marka Tutumuna Etkisi
Artikel Yayincilik (Turkish edition)
Turkish version of the Master's thesis published as a book in Turkey.
🎍 Awards & Honors
🥇 2x Effie Gold for Coca-Cola — Effie Worldwide, 2014
🍎 4x Kristal Elma for Coca-Cola (Mobile, Best FMCG, Integrated Strategy, OOH) — Crystal Apple Festival of Creativity, 2014
🌟 Kristal Elma Grand Prix — Best Overall Media, Coca-Cola — Crystal Apple Festival of Creativity, 2014
🌍 Languages
Turkish (Native)
English (Full Professional)
German (Limited Working, B1)
✨ Beyond Work
🚣🏻♀️ Rowing — Taught me the power of synchronicity, endurance, and moving toward a common goal with precision.
🤸🏻♀️ Pilates — My go-to for mindful balance and core strength, keeping me focused and resilient under pressure.
🧶 Amigurumi — Crafting intricate designs stitch by stitch keeps my creative problem-solving skills sharp.