Panda Ads’ CEO Alexander Gavrilin on Mastering Contextual Advertising

In his exclusive WebsitePlanet interview, Alexander Gavrilin, CEO of Panda Ads, talks about the journey that led to the founding of his successful digital agency. He shares insights into the inspiration behind Panda Ads, the range of services they offer, and their approach to fostering growth within the ever-evolving landscape of internet marketing. With a strong background in contextual advertising, Alexander has built Panda Ads into a performance marketing powerhouse, helping medium and large businesses achieve their goals through targeted campaigns, SEO optimization, and more. Continue reading to learn more.

Can you tell us about the founding story behind Panda Ads? What inspired the creation of the company?

At the beginning of my career, I was a systems administrator. But by 2010, I was hungry for new challenges and growth. Drawn to the dynamic world of internet marketing, I decided that digital is the field in which I want to try myself.

My ambitions led me to ArrowMedia – the digital agency, where I started an internship in 2015. After optimizing the structure of the project, I proposed to develop a new direction – mobile marketing. However, at that time the top management was not interested in its development. So I switched to the agency “High Business Ideas”. After a year and a half of working with the head of department, we were able to train and optimize the work of the context advertising group. It was an experience that inspired us to start our agency. So in 2018, Panda Media appeared (then we changed the name).

What different kinds of marketing/advertisement services do you offer?

We provide key marketing services worldwide: CIS countries, USA, Canada, Italy, Portugal, France, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Chile, South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and others.

1. Context advertising in Yandex and Google Ads: we develop campaigns to meet the client’s specific needs;

2. Targeted advertising: creating advertising campaigns on social networks;

3. Yandex.Promotion: We write articles from the original to the selling and we bring traffic from 1 ruble per reader;

4. Integrated solutions: ensuring the full marketing services cycle attracting traffic, orders, and sales;

5. Effective website development: including design, aesthetics, and navigation through the site and its contents.

What’s the technology stack behind Panda Ads?

We use our own mix of Agile and HADI cycles. The point is that the team works by sprint, and they have classic daily statuses where they discuss the status of current tasks.

On Fridays, during the retro (retrospective) evenings when the team discusses the work plan for all projects for the following week. The whole team is needed to find more ideas with a fresh eye, and less experienced employees are being trained in project development and solving non-typical problems.

HADI is activated here at the moment of generation of hypothesis, when the team discusses problems, suggests solutions, selects a tool for them, and forms the criteria of success of the hypothesis.

What can you tell me about Jun’s School?

The Academy is a very important project for us. At first, we took in the team guys who did not know almost anything about digital, but they really wanted to develop in this direction. But things are changing and we also have to change our approach to hiring by working with more experienced people. However, their approach does not always match ours and we have to part, wasting time, money, and forces on training and adaptation of a person.

The Academy is an Internet marketing school that allows us to raise the level of education of both junior and experienced marketers who want to expand their competencies. We don’t go into too much detail about which button to press to start the project. But we spend a lot of time identifying the needs of the client, communicating with them, and so on. Things that customers often value more than the return from advertising. This allows the marketer to work more efficiently because the result usually can not be achieved from the start, you need to understand what the customer wants and help him manage expectations and achieve results together. Well, of course, the best graduates remain working in our ranks.