SIGN OF the times
Core Media relies on local knowledge and relationships, as well as its extensive experience, to further its business.
Core Media has undergone a number of restructurings since its creation over two decades ago. Can you outline the changes and reasons for them?
In 1994, the company was called Magic Advertising. Initially, we did advertising on municipality buses. Magic Advertising was acquired by Clear Channel, an international media company, in 1999 and became a strategic partner of Istanbul Municipality. Initially, it was one of the two big suppliers of bus shelter advertising around the city before expanding its business into Anatolia, winning tenders in cities like Antalya, which is the biggest tourist center in Turkey after Istanbul, and Kayseri, an industrial hub near Cappadocia. Between 2002 and 2013, Clear Channel was fairly successful in Turkey. Then, due to Clear Channel’s concerns with the global economy, it decided to exit some of its emerging markets. I was CFO when we acquired the business from Clear Channel. Now our firm is called Core Media.
How have Core Media’s operations changed since you acquired it from Clear Channel?
Clear Channel Turkey was a financially healthy company when I acquired it in 2016. When the coup attempt happened, it brought some instability to our business. The elections, referendum, presidential elections, and changes in the administrative and municipality systems all followed the failed coup, making the last three years difficult, especially since we were no longer backed by a multinational company. But having local knowledge and relationships has been more important than having multinational support. Our business is heavily dependent on local dynamics and experience both to sell advertising and win tenders. We have become leaner as a result of Clear
Channel’s exit and have outsourced much of our operations, so we can focus on sales. We no longer have the quarterly financial reporting obligations of a listed company, so we have reduced the amount of bureaucracy in the company. We are able to make decisions faster. Core Media is a big company in our industry. Now we have gone from moving like an elephant, powerful but cumbersome, to moving like a cat, quick and crafty.
Across your markets around Turkey, what different revenue streams do you have?
Core Media has different types of revenue streams. In Istanbul, we have a bus advertising business, free-standing units in urban areas, and the metro bus line, which is the backbone of the city. These components complement each other, because in this industry you have to sell the units as networks. Therefore, the metro bus line and free-standing units together are becoming a good network for us. In the shopping malls, we run digital advertising units and have high end shopping malls in our portfolio. Among others, we operate in the top two malls in Istanbul—Zorlu and Kanyon—in addition to the Mall of Istanbul, where many tourists visit. We manage more than 300 digital advertising screens in malls, all from a central control point, so it is much more efficient than traditional forms of advertising. However, it is also more capital intensive initially, as you have to invest in the technology. We also run the advertising units for Yalıkavak, one of the top five marinas in Europe. Aside from Istanbul, we run billboards and all the bus stop advertisements in Antalya, Kayseri, Edirne, Kırklareli, and Kahramanmaraş. We provide advertising spaces in some shopping malls in Izmir and Ankara as well. ✖
GABORAS seeks to develop a real estate environment that creates trust. In our sector, there are many different real estate values being quoted. For example, property appraisal institutions and insurance companies both have values that differ from the market price. Investors, both local and international, are not sure which value is correct. GABORAS seeks to digitize the entire real estate sector’s operations and provide concrete and technical information about each and every piece of real estate in Turkey. We have 183,000 title deeds in total and can provide information about all of these, whether it be earthquake issues, new legislation affecting the property, or the market price over the last 24 months. GABORAS seeks to digitize, standardize, and provide property information, as well as create indexes and then later come up with a real estate stock exchange. We have done 10 years of hard work on big data, algorithms, and creating technical information. We have finished that first stage of big data, and the second stage is monitoring one’s real estate portfolio. This is crucial, for example, for a general manager who needs to know exactly what real estate assets the institution has, along with their current value. Property values change over time, and valuation reports take time to do, so we need to digitize the valuation process. We want to create a real estate declaration control system because there are a number of real estate listing services and websites in Turkey, though these are not controlled so they are easy to manipulate, for example, by using fake valuation declarations or prices. We want users to be able to access all the legal documentation relating to a property, such as construction permits and real estate broker documents and then work with the various real estate listing services to verify the information. The third stage includes various systems, such as providing contact details for a list of the best real estate brokers, appraisal institutions, and planners in each area (i.e. grid system) for people who want to verify information on the ground. This way buyers can verify if the online information about a property is true or not. We have all the smart data ready and can provide external services to government officials as well.
What is GABORAS’ strategy to ensure its real estate platform always has the most up-to-date information?
The information is instantly updated because we use open source data on the internet, which is always being updated. We also use government data relating to any special analysis, and if there is a decision that is announced publicly from the government, it will immediately go into our system. This is the most up-to-date real estate information you can access in Turkey.
Has GABORAS received any support or push back from the government? What hurdles do you face under the current regulations?
The government has different institutions and ministries. When introducing something new, such as a digital model that has not been used before, some may oppose it. However, the president has explicitly stated that a real estate stock exchange market should be established in Turkey, that studies for this should be accelerated, and that we do not have time to waste in this area. Some ministers are also highly supportive of this idea. Thankfully the government has been extremely supportive, and this idea and project are getting bigger. In six months, we will be talking about something more. ✖
“We have 183,000 title deeds in total and can provide information about all of these, whether it be earthquake issues, new legislation affecting the property, or the market price over the last 24 months.”