Kıvanç Ünal, Co-Founder and CEO of Orphex, was a guest on the Slush'D Podcast series hosted by Sonat Kaymaz at Istanbul Ignited by Slush'D, held October 12-14, 2026, at Rixos Tersane Istanbul. Ünal talked about how AI is reshaping digital marketing operations, how Orphex has handed the marketing management of its own brands entirely over to AI, and where the agency model is headed. Orphex was a media partner at the event.
Highlights
Orphex has handed the digital marketing management of its own brands to AI platforms such as Claude and ChatGPT through Orphex MCP. According to Ünal, the results from the first two months were better than what the team had achieved managing the brands itself.
Ünal said the digital marketing industry can't reach its goals through human effort alone, and that a new model has begun in which people's knowledge and experience are transferred to AI.
He stressed that enterprises will keep needing services, but those services will come from highly skilled teams of five to ten people, not teams of a hundred.
Orphex was a media partner at Istanbul Ignited by Slush'D.
What is Istanbul Ignited by Slush'D?
Istanbul Ignited by Slush'D is the Istanbul edition of Slush'D, the licensed series of Slush, the Helsinki-based global startup event. Now in its second year, the event opened with an investor day and hackathons on October 12 and continued with the main conference at Rixos Tersane Istanbul on October 13-14, 2026. Over three days, it brought together more than 2,500 attendees and more than 100 speakers. Orphex was a media partner at the event.
How is AI changing digital marketing?
Kıvanç Ünal has more than a decade of experience in digital marketing. After growing AnalyticaHouse, the company he founded, into a team of 70 to 80 people, he said they had set out with a vision of moving the industry to a better place from the start, but that he now believes that goal can't be reached with human effort alone:
"Where we are today, we believe the industry can't get where we want it to go with human effort alone. We've turned Orphex into a structure where the major AI platforms can actually manage digital marketing, and where people use their knowledge and experience to explain how those systems should work. I haven't been this excited in a long time."
Kıvanç Ünal, Co-Founder and CEO of Orphex
The structure Ünal describes is the core logic of Orphex MCP. Marketers connect more than 50 advertising and analytics platforms, including Meta, Google, and TikTok, to AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini through Orphex. They then handle tasks like performance analysis, budget changes, campaign pauses, and ad setup through conversation. People's role is to decide the rules the system runs by, in other words, to build the framework around the AI.
Why did Orphex hand its own marketing over to AI?
Orphex's vision is to accelerate the shift to a model in which AI makes the decisions and runs operations in digital marketing, while people set the strategy and the rules. The company is applying that vision to itself first: today, ad management for Orphex's own brands has been handed over to AI platforms through Orphex MCP. Ünal sees this step as a prerequisite for making the case for the transformation credibly:
"We have to make sure we can solve our own problem first, so that we can really talk about it. Today we've handed the entire management and intelligence of our own business over to Orphex. With Orphex MCP, we got better results in just two months than we had achieved ourselves. It's both very good and a little scary."
Kıvanç Ünal, Co-Founder and CEO of Orphex
AnalyticaHouse alumni became Orphex's first users
The team Ünal built at AnalyticaHouse now works in the digital marketing departments of many of Turkey's largest companies. Ünal said that at this event alone, he ran into ten entrepreneurs from his former team. This ecosystem became Orphex's first customers and the first users of the new AI-focused model:
"It's a story that's hard to tell, and hard to change an industry with. But these people understand it easily and can make the shift quickly. They were Orphex's first users and customers, and they were the first users of this new story, too."
Kıvanç Ünal, Co-Founder and CEO of Orphex
Ünal also pointed to the noise around AI. He said technologies like MCP have turned into a story everyone is telling, which is why it matters more than ever for the people living the transformation in the field to have a say and to tell the story accurately.
Will agencies and services still be needed in the age of AI?
In the final part of the conversation, prompted by a question from Sonat Kaymaz, the discussion turned to how services such as setup, account management, and consulting will take shape in the age of AI. Ünal said that services will definitely continue at the enterprise scale, but their structure will change. He explained that when AI is given a task, there are thousands of different ways it can be done, so companies will need "company brain" teams that turn a company's knowledge into how the system works:
"Forget what the platform knows or which model it uses. You need services to build structures that can explain how these systems should work. But not for a hundred average people; for five or ten very smart ones. The digital world has to move in that direction, and we want to be among the first to make this transformation."
Kıvanç Ünal, Co-Founder and CEO of Orphex
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Orphex?
Orphex is a digital marketing orchestration platform that connects more than 50 advertising and analytics platforms, including Meta, Google, and TikTok, to AI assistants. With Orphex MCP, marketers can report, change budgets, pause campaigns, and set up ads through conversation in tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Cursor, and Grok Bot. It is designed for agencies, marketers who manage multiple brands, and e-commerce teams.
What does Orphex MCP do?
Orphex MCP is an integration built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard. It lets AI assistants read real data in ad accounts and take action with approval. Campaigns and ads created through Orphex are first set up as paused and go live only with user approval.
Who is Kıvanç Ünal?
Kıvanç Ünal is the co-founder and CEO of Orphex. He has more than ten years of experience in digital marketing. He is a former CMO of Trendyol and the founder of AnalyticaHouse, one of the largest digital marketing agencies in Turkey.
When and where was Istanbul Ignited by Slush'D held?
The event took place in Istanbul on October 12-14, 2026. The main conference was held at Rixos Tersane Istanbul on October 13-14. Orphex was the event's media partner.
About Orphex
Orphex is an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform that lets digital marketing teams manage more than 50 advertising and analytics platforms through a single integration. With Orphex MCP, marketers can run performance analysis and take budget and campaign actions from AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Cursor, and Grok Bot. To try Orphex for free, go to mcp.orphex.co
