Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Ad Operations Coordinator

🎯 Role Definition

The Ad Operations Coordinator is responsible for trafficking, monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimizing digital advertising campaigns across programmatic and direct-sold channels. This role ensures accurate campaign setup in ad servers and DSPs, maintains creative and targeting integrity, produces timely campaign reporting, and collaborates with sales, creative, and analytics teams to maximize campaign performance, delivery, and client satisfaction.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Digital Marketing Assistant or Marketing Intern transitioning into ad ops.
Junior Ad Operations Specialist or Traffic Coordinator.
Media Coordinator or Campaign Coordinator with exposure to ad servers.

Advancement To:

Senior Ad Operations Specialist / Senior Ad Ops Manager.
Programmatic Strategist / Programmatic Trading Desk Analyst.
Ad Operations Manager or Programmatic Operations Lead.

Lateral Moves:

Campaign Manager (client-facing campaign lead).
Ad QA / Creative Operations Specialist.
Media Analytics or Insights Analyst.

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Manage end-to-end trafficking of digital display, video, mobile and native advertising campaigns in ad servers and DSPs (e.g., Google Ad Manager, Campaign Manager 360, DV360, The Trade Desk), ensuring targeting, creatives, flight dates, and budgeting are implemented accurately and on schedule.
Configure and implement ad tags, pixels, and third-party tracking codes, validate tag firing across browsers and devices, and maintain a library of validated tags and templates for recurring use.
Perform detailed quality assurance (QA) on creative assets, verifying click-through URLs, backup images, file types (HTML5, GIF, JPG, MP4), size constraints, and ensuring compliance with publisher and platform technical specifications.
Troubleshoot delivery, creative, and reporting discrepancies: investigate under-delivery, over-delivery, pacing issues, discrepancies between ad servers and DSPs, and provide timely root-cause analysis and remediation plans to internal and external stakeholders.
Monitor campaign delivery daily and implement pacing adjustments, creative rotations, frequency caps, and dayparting to meet KPI targets and ensure efficient budget spend by campaign end date.
Manage insertion orders (IOs) and trafficking documentation, confirm IO-to-adserver mappings, track spend vs. pacing, and escalate budget or targeting changes to account managers and finance as required.
Build, maintain, and distribute standardized campaign dashboards and executive reports (daily/weekly/monthly), using tools like Excel pivot tables, Looker, Google Data Studio or Tableau, including metrics such as impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, CPM, viewability, and conversion rates.
Reconcile reporting differences across platforms (GAM, CM360, DSPs, analytics), document reconciliation logic, and produce definitive reconciled numbers for billing and post-campaign analysis.
Implement third-party verification and viewability tags (e.g., IAS, Moat), manage MRC-compliant reporting, and work with verification vendors to resolve measurement discrepancies and fraud concerns.
Coordinate with creative teams and vendors to manage creative production schedules, ensure correct asset delivery, and validate that rich media and HTML5 creatives function correctly across target inventory.
Implement and validate programmatic line items, deal IDs, private marketplaces (PMPs), and programmatic guaranteed buys, including bid strategies, bid caps, and targeting parameters.
Maintain campaign and audience targeting logic including geo, device, OS, browser, inventory, contextual categories, IP targeting, and custom segments; ensure privacy-compliant handling of PII and cookie/consent requirements.
Support ad tagging strategy for conversion tracking and attribution: deploy and test conversion pixels, event tracking, and server-side tracking integrations with analytics platforms and tag managers.
Liaise with publishers and supply-side platforms (SSPs) to troubleshoot delivery, creative rendering, and technical integrations; manage and test creative acceptance across publisher environments.
Provide client-facing support for campaign setup and performance: participate in status calls, present trafficking timelines, confirm reporting cadence, and implement post-launch optimization recommendations.
Execute creative troubleshooting across devices and environments (desktop, mobile web, in-app), including debugging rendering issues, video playback, VAST/VPAID compatibility, and SDK integration issues.
Maintain a campaign operations runbook and process documentation that standardizes trafficking, naming conventions, tagging standards, and QA checklists to reduce operational risk and scale duplication of efforts.
Assist finance and billing teams with campaign reconciliation, delivery confirmations, and signed-off metrics for invoicing and revenue recognition.
Lead post-campaign wrap-ups and post-mortems: analyze campaign performance, surface learnings, produce optimization playbooks, and recommend improvements for future buys.
Stay current on programmatic advertising trends, ad tech product updates, privacy and regulatory changes (e.g., CCPA, GDPR, consent frameworks), and recommend platform adoption or process changes to improve operations efficiency.
Coordinate cross-functional pilots and ad tech integrations (e.g., new ad servers, verification tools, header bidding implementations), test implementations, and provide feedback to product and engineering teams.
Create and maintain training materials and operational guides; onboard new hires and upskill sales/account teams on trafficking processes, campaign constraints, and standard report interpretation.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory analysis to help sales and analytics teams answer campaign and inventory questions.
Contribute to continuous improvement of ad operations processes, tools, and templates to reduce QA time and increase delivery accuracy.
Collaborate with business units to translate campaign and measurement needs into operational requirements and technical specifications.
Participate in sprint planning, operational retrospectives, and agile ceremonies where the ad ops function interacts with product and engineering teams.
Assist with inventory forecasting and yield management analysis to help sales prioritize high-performing placements and optimize CPMs.
Support privacy and consent compliance audits by ensuring campaigns adhere to current consent signals and do-not-track policies.
Help manage vendor relationships for creative build partners, verification vendors, and ad server support escalation points.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Proficient in ad servers and platforms: Google Ad Manager (GAM), Campaign Manager 360 (CM360) and/or Sizmek.
Hands-on experience with programmatic DSPs and platforms: Display & Video 360 (DV360), The Trade Desk, or similar.
Strong Excel skills including pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, and basic macros for reconciliation and reporting.
Working knowledge of analytics and dashboarding tools: Google Analytics, Looker, Google Data Studio / Looker Studio, Tableau.
Practical understanding of ad tech standards: VAST, VPAID, OpenRTB, OM SDK and common creative specifications for HTML5, video and native.
Experience implementing and validating third-party tracking pixels, verification tags (IAS, Moat), and viewability measurement.
Basic SQL query skills for ad ops data pulls and reconciliation tasks (preferred but not always required).
Familiarity with campaign billing and insertion order management, with attention to budget pacing and delivery metrics for invoicing.
Experience with tag management systems (Google Tag Manager), pixel troubleshooting, and cross-domain tracking issues.
Knowledge of programmatic primitives: DSP/SSP integration, PMP/deal ID setups, bid strategies, and private marketplace mechanics.
Comfortable using issue tracking and collaboration tools such as Jira, Confluence, Slack, or Asana for cross-team coordination.

Soft Skills

Strong attention to detail with a bias for accurate, repeatable processes and checklists.
Clear, client-facing communication skills with the ability to explain technical issues in plain language.
Excellent time management and prioritization skills to manage multiple campaigns, deadlines, and urgent troubleshooting.
Analytical mindset with problem-solving orientation: able to diagnose complex discrepancies and recommend corrective action.
Collaborative team player who can work across sales, creative, product, and engineering teams.
Customer service orientation: responsive, proactive, and resourceful when supporting internal and external stakeholders.
Adaptability and willingness to learn new platforms, industry changes, and evolving privacy requirements.
Ability to document processes and create training materials for cross-functional teams.
Resilience under pressure during high-traffic periods such as product launches or major campaign starts.
Critical thinking and the ability to synthesize performance data into actionable optimization recommendations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Associate degree OR Bachelor's degree in a related field, or equivalent practical experience in digital advertising operations.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Advertising, Communications, Business, Data Analytics, or Computer Science.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Marketing and Advertising
Digital Media or Media Studies
Communications
Business Administration
Data Analytics / Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 1–4 years of hands-on experience in ad operations, trafficking, or digital campaign management.

Preferred:

2+ years working directly in ad operations or programmatic campaign trafficking.
Demonstrated experience with ad servers (GAM / CM360) and at least one major DSP.
Prior experience in a fast-paced agency, publisher, or ad tech environment, with exposure to both direct-sold and programmatic campaigns.
Experience producing reconciled campaign reports and supporting billing/invoicing processes.