What makes working at Aarki so special is being part of a team of exceptionally brilliant, ingeniously creative, and friendly people. To get to know more about our colleagues, we will feature a new team member every month.
Who’s on this month's spotlight?
- Who are you and what do you do?
I am Igor, software engineer and data scientist at Aarki. I develop and deploy statistical models for user response prediction and bid optimization.
- What drew you to Aarki originally?
I joined Aarki a few months after the company was founded in 2010. I was drawn in by the small, energetic team and tremendous growth opportunity. At the time, we were developing a very interesting technology to transparently apply mobile-friendly skins to desktop websites. Since then, we've explored many different directions in ad-tech, culminating in the launch of Encore, our unified creative and programmatic media buying platform.
- What has been the most important innovation you have witnessed in Aarki?
We started building and leveraging a device profile database to dramatically improve the quality of our ad targeting.
- What sorts of industry trends do you see?
Advertisers are shifting their primary focus from shallow campaign performance indicators, like ad clicks or app installs, to ROI/ROAS. This makes it crucial to develop more sophisticated models to forecast revenue opportunity from a given user.
- What do you think is Aarki’s biggest opportunity in 5 years?
With our strong creative platform and ever-evolving predictive models, we're able to deliver more and more personalized and effective ad experiences. I think in five years, Aarki will be unsurpassed in serving delightful and relevant ad experiences, while delivering quality users to advertisers.
- How would you describe Aarki culture?
The people here are smart, driven, and innovative, which makes the work days extremely pleasant, and company outings even more so.
- What is your personal philosophy?
The most important thing is to be kind to people.
- How would you describe the best place you’ve travelled by far?
I went to the Lofoten islands off the coast of Norway, above the Arctic Circle. It's a very unique place. The expensive flight, four-hour ferry ride, and near-constant rain deter most tourists, but this means that everyone you encounter is truly happy to be there.
- What are the three things you can’t live without?
Music, snow, porterhouse steak.
- What books are at your bedside?
Gödel, Escher, Bach (one book, not three).
- What is an ability you wish you have?
Time travel, mostly just to get more hours in a day.
- You’d like to be famous for?
To be honest, I wouldn't like to be famous. Sounds like a chore.
- You’re happiest when?
When something that really needed to get done is finally done.
Igor is a graduate of BS Computer Science and has been in the industry for 7 years. By developing advanced machine learning algorithms, Igor helps Aarki to reach and acquire prospective users and deliver strong ROI.
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