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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Advertising Account Executive

💰 $ - $

AdvertisingMarketingDigital MarketingAccount ManagementSales

🎯 Role Definition

The Advertising Account Executive is a client-facing advertising professional responsible for planning, executing, optimizing, and reporting on multi-channel advertising campaigns. This role acts as the primary liaison between advertisers and internal teams (creative, media buying, analytics, operations), driving campaign performance, budget stewardship, strategic recommendations, and revenue growth. The ideal candidate balances relationship management, tactical campaign execution, and data-driven optimization across search, social, display, video, and programmatic channels.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Account Executive / Account Coordinator in an ad agency or in-house marketing team
  • Media Planner / Paid Search Associate
  • Sales Development Representative or Business Development Associate with advertising exposure

Advancement To:

  • Senior Account Executive / Senior Media Manager
  • Account Manager / Client Lead
  • Advertising Account Director / Group Account Director

Lateral Moves:

  • Media Strategy or Planning Specialist
  • Performance Marketing Manager / Paid Media Specialist
  • New Business Development / Business Director

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Serve as the day-to-day client lead, building trusted consultative relationships by proactively communicating strategy, campaign performance, timelines, and recommendations to stakeholders at all levels.
  • Develop, present, and defend comprehensive media plans and campaign strategies that align with client objectives, including audience targeting, channel mix (search, social, display, video, programmatic), and KPIs.
  • Manage end-to-end campaign setup, trafficking, and launch across platforms such as Google Ads, Meta Business Manager, DV360, The Trade Desk, and ad servers, ensuring accurate placement, pacing, and creative alignment.
  • Monitor daily and weekly campaign performance metrics (CTR, CPC, CPA, CPM, ROAS, viewability) and execute tactical optimizations to improve efficiency and meet or exceed client goals.
  • Oversee campaign budgets and pacing, forecast spend, prevent underspend/overspend, and provide regular budget reconciliation and variance explanations to clients and internal teams.
  • Lead creative briefs and coordination with in-house or external creative teams to deliver on-time ad assets (static, native, video, HTML5), ensuring specs, QA, and brand compliance are met.
  • Conduct A/B tests and multivariate experiments across creative, landing pages, audience segments, and bidding strategies; interpret results and scale winning tactics.
  • Prepare persuasive, data-driven client reporting and dashboards (weekly, monthly, quarterly) with actionable insights and next-step recommendations tailored to business objectives.
  • Negotiate deals, rate cards, and added-value opportunities with media vendors and publishers to secure advantageous placements, sponsorships, and inventory.
  • Use analytics tools (Google Analytics, GA4, Adobe Analytics) and attribution models to connect ad performance to business outcomes and support measurement frameworks.
  • Implement tracking and tagging strategies (UTM, conversion pixels, server-side solutions) to ensure accurate conversion measurement and data integrity across platforms.
  • Coordinate cross-functional teams (media buying, analytics, creative, product, legal) to ensure campaign requirements, timelines, and SLAs are met from kickoff to post-campaign wrap.
  • Generate and qualify new business leads within existing accounts by identifying growth opportunities, upsell scenarios, and pilot initiatives aligned with client objectives.
  • Maintain up-to-date knowledge of industry trends, platform changes, and emerging ad tech (CTV/OTT, connected devices, programmatic guaranteed) to inform strategic recommendations.
  • Drive quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and planning sessions that synthesize performance, learnings, and a roadmap of strategic initiatives for sustained growth.
  • Create and maintain detailed campaign documentation, creative inventories, trafficking sheets, and post-mortem analyses for continuous improvement and institutional knowledge.
  • Ensure all advertising activities comply with brand safety guidelines, legal requirements, platform policies, and client-specific regulatory needs (e.g., privacy and data handling compliance).
  • Resolve escalations rapidly, diagnosing performance or delivery issues, collaborating with technical teams or vendors, and communicating transparent remediation plans to clients.
  • Mentor junior account staff, provide performance feedback, delegate tasks effectively, and contribute to building a high-performing account team.
  • Manage RFPs and pitch deliverables, contributing to pitch strategy, pricing models, and client proposals that clearly articulate media approach and value proposition.
  • Track competitive activity and market shifts, translating insights into tactical changes or opportunities to differentiate client campaigns and improve ROI.
  • Create scalable replication playbooks and templates for campaign setup, reporting, and optimization that improve operational efficiency across accounts.

Secondary Functions

  • Support cross-channel measurement initiatives, including partnerships with data science or analytics teams to refine attribution and incrementality testing.
  • Assist in building client-facing dashboards and automated reporting systems to reduce manual reporting time and increase transparency.
  • Participate in agency-wide projects, knowledge-sharing sessions, and training programs to expand cross-functional capabilities.
  • Represent the agency or brand at industry events, client workshops, and internal learning sessions to showcase performance wins and industry best practices.
  • Collaborate with business development to provide client case studies, campaign summaries, and success metrics for marketing and sales enablement materials.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Campaign management across search, social, display, video, and programmatic channels (Google Ads, Meta, DV360, The Trade Desk).
  • Strong proficiency with analytics platforms (Google Analytics / GA4, Adobe Analytics) and attribution frameworks.
  • Hands-on experience with ad-serving platforms and tracking implementations (Campaign Manager, Sizmek, Google Tag Manager, UTM tagging).
  • Familiarity with bidding strategies, audience segmentation, retargeting, lookalike modeling, and audience discovery tools.
  • Competency in Excel for budget modeling, pivot tables, and performance analysis; familiarity with SQL for querying data is a plus.
  • Experience with marketing automation and CRM tools (Salesforce, HubSpot) to manage client pipelines and campaign touchpoints.
  • Knowledge of programmatic concepts (RTB, PMP, Private Marketplace, PMP deals) and header bidding where relevant.
  • Proven ability to build and maintain dashboards in BI tools (Looker, Tableau, Data Studio) and automate reporting processes.
  • Understanding of privacy-first measurement approaches (consent frameworks, first-party data strategies, server-side tagging, GA4 migrations).
  • Strong copy and presentation skills for clear client-facing documentation and persuasive creative/ad copy direction.
  • Experience managing campaign creatives, QA processes, and technical creative requirements (ad specs, file types, tracking pixels).
  • Familiarity with connected TV (CTV/OTT) and streaming ad-buying approaches (preferred for candidates managing video-heavy clients).

Soft Skills

  • Client-focused relationship-building with exceptional verbal and written communication.
  • Strategic thinking with an ability to translate business goals into measurable media plans and KPIs.
  • Analytical mindset and curiosity; comfortable making data-driven recommendations and learning from test results.
  • Problem-solving and rapid escalation management under tight deadlines.
  • Project management and organizational skills to juggle multiple accounts and complex campaign timelines.
  • Negotiation and commercial acumen to identify upsell opportunities and drive revenue growth.
  • Collaborative team player who can influence cross-functional partners without direct authority.
  • Resilience and adaptability in a fast-changing digital advertising environment.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience) in Marketing, Advertising, Communications, Business, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree with certifications in Google Ads, Meta Blueprint, DV360, or programmatic advertising courses; continuing education in data analytics or digital marketing strategy.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Marketing
  • Advertising / Media Studies
  • Communications
  • Business Administration
  • Data Analytics / Statistics (beneficial)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 2–5 years of client-facing advertising or media experience (agency, in-house, or consulting), with demonstrable campaign ownership.

Preferred:

  • 4–7+ years managing mid-market or enterprise accounts with end-to-end responsibility for multi-channel digital campaigns and measurable revenue impact.
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