Ran Gishri

Teaching:
70649-01 כלים יישומיים בשיווק דיגיטלי

Bio:

Meet Ran Gishri, 50, a graduate of Bar-Ilan University's Department of Computer Science and VP of Marketing at Taboola, the world's leading content recommendation company. Employing sophisticated data analytics tools to gauge exactly what kind of content is most likely to engage each individual, he can tell you, for example: Daenerys – In; Night King – Out.

"Even today, nearly thirty years after completing my degree, the strong technological base I acquired in Bar-Ilan University's Department of Computer Science gives me great added value as a marketing manager," says Gishri, who began programming as a child. Following his IDF service, he enrolled at BIU, and during his freshman year, joined Mercury – then a small start-up, which was later sold to HP for billions of dollars. Gishri says he enjoyed his Bar-Ilan studies – particularly the congenial atmosphere in the department and the connections he created with classmates, many of whom served in the Israeli Air Force and in the Israel Defense Forces's Center of Computing and Information Systems.

At the outset of his professional career, Gishri worked on software testing and wrote software for quality assurance – "an innovative concept back then," he says. "As someone who knew the company's products in depth, I was called upon to provide support for our first customers in Israel and the US, and I was exposed to a variety of technologies and work environments." At the end of his studies he stood at a crossroads and was asked to choose between joining the development team or opting for a marketing position. "In light of my experience, I thought that the role of a product manager, which embraces both technology and familiarity with the market, would suit me more than the role of a software developer."

Gishri, who also holds an MBA from The University of Manchester, has never worked as a developer, and yet the knowledge and understanding he acquired in BIU's Department of Computer Science has proved very valuable. "Most marketing vice presidents come from non-technological fields. My comparative advantage is that I got the best possible background for modern marketing. A marketing manager today has to understand the possibilities and limitations of technology and data processing, and be able to have intelligent conversations with software and hardware people. "

At Taboola, Gishri manages the global marketing department, which works with the largest media companies and brands in the world. He takes advantage of the vast information gathered on the Taboola platform to identify trends and build stories based on web-browsing data. "Unlike Google and Facebook, Taboola does not know the users' e-mail addresses or who their friends are, but we know what their interests are, what they read and how much time they spend on content," he relates. "For example, we analyzed global surfing data on the new season of the Game of Thrones and found that viewers are most interested in Daenerys, while Night King doesn't even rank among the top 20 characters. Such stories get media coverage and help Taboola position itself as a company that offers interesting and accessible information and data."