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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Advertising Assistant

💰 $ - $

MarketingAdvertisingAssistant RoleDigital Marketing

🎯 Role Definition

The Advertising Assistant is responsible for supporting planning, trafficking, optimization, and reporting of advertising campaigns across paid search, social, display, video, and programmatic channels. This role acts as a tactical operator and cross-functional coordinator — ensuring ad creative is delivered and tagged, budgets are tracked, performance is reported, and optimizations are implemented under the direction of a Campaign Manager or Media Planner. Strong attention to detail, familiarity with ad platforms, and basic analytics skills are essential.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Marketing Coordinator / Marketing Assistant
  • Media Buying Intern / Ad Ops Intern
  • Sales Support or Client Services Associate

Advancement To:

  • Advertising / Campaign Coordinator
  • Junior Media Buyer or Ad Operations Specialist
  • Performance Marketing Associate
  • Paid Social or Paid Search Specialist

Lateral Moves:

  • Social Media Manager
  • Content Marketing Coordinator
  • Email Marketing Coordinator

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Manage day-to-day trafficking and execution of digital ad campaigns across Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, and programmatic DSPs; set up campaigns, ad groups, creatives, targeting, budgets, and bid strategies following the media plan and QA checklist.
  • Perform comprehensive QA for creative assets and ad tags before launch, including verifying ad sizing, creative display, tracking pixel firing, correct URL parameters, and mobile responsiveness to avoid delivery issues and revenue loss.
  • Implement and maintain consistent UTM tagging and naming conventions across campaigns to ensure accurate source/medium reporting in Google Analytics, CRM systems, and marketing dashboards.
  • Monitor live campaign performance daily and proactively identify pacing, delivery, CTR, CPC/CPA trends and anomalies; escalate strategic optimization recommendations (bid adjustments, audience refinements, creative swaps) to the Campaign Manager.
  • Prepare and distribute weekly and monthly performance reports and dashboards using Google Analytics (GA4), Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio), Excel, or BI tools; translate data into clear insights and prioritized action items for stakeholders.
  • Assist with budget tracking and reconciliation, including daily spend checks, forecasting remaining spend vs. budget, identifying overspend risks, and coordinating payment or invoicing with finance and media partners.
  • Support A/B and multivariate testing of creatives, headlines, CTAs and landing pages; document hypotheses, track results, and recommend learnings to inform future ad creative and messaging.
  • Collaborate with internal creative teams and external vendors to brief, test, and approve ad creatives; ensure creative specs, deadlines, and delivery formats meet publisher and platform requirements.
  • Execute audience build-outs and segmentation for campaign targeting (lookalikes, custom audiences, retargeting lists); maintain and refresh audience lists and CRM integrations to maximize reach and efficiency.
  • Troubleshoot ad delivery, tracking discrepancies, and technical issues with ad servers, tag management (Google Tag Manager), analytics, and publishers; coordinate ticketing and escalation to ad ops partners when necessary.
  • Maintain accurate trafficking logs, campaign change records, and a central repository for ad creative, flighting dates, and approvals to ensure transparency and compliance during audits.
  • Support pixel, conversion event, and offline conversion setup and validation to improve lead attribution and feed conversion data into CRM or analytics systems.
  • Execute basic programmatic tasks such as creating IOs (Insertion Orders), setting up line items in DSPs, monitoring viewability, and coordinating with trading desks for insertion and pacing.
  • Ensure compliance with ad platform policies, privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA), and brand safety measures; flag and prevent disallowed content or targeting that could lead to account sanctions.
  • Assist account teams with client-facing materials, campaign recaps, and performance narrative development; prepare slide decks and talking points that summarize results and next steps.
  • Support search account tasks such as keyword research, search term mining, negative keyword list maintenance, and updating match types based on performance data.
  • Maintain and update templates for media plans, creative briefs, trafficking checklists, and reporting dashboards to increase operational efficiency and consistency across campaigns.
  • Coordinate with publishers and partners to manage creative trafficking, ad placements, whitelists/blacklists, and premium inventory reservations; confirm specs and negotiate delivery timelines.
  • Participate in new campaign onboarding: gather creative assets, validate landing pages, confirm measurement requirements, and create production timelines with internal stakeholders.
  • Assist in competitive and market research for campaign ideation, monitoring competitor creatives, placements, and offer messaging to inform tactical shifts.
  • Support lead management workflows by verifying ad-to-landing-page conversions, coordinating with sales teams for lead handoff, and tagging leads for lifecycle analysis.
  • Maintain up-to-date knowledge of platform updates, beta features, and best practices across paid search, social, programmatic, and video channels; propose pilot tests for promising new capabilities.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests, exploratory analysis, and one-off campaign deep-dives to surface actionable optimizations and attribution anomalies.
  • Help develop and maintain standardized reporting templates, automation routines, and campaign summaries to reduce manual work and improve cross-account comparability.
  • Contribute to the development of playbooks and process documentation (ad ops runbooks, trafficking SOPs, escalation paths) to scale campaign execution across teams.
  • Participate in campaign planning sessions and sprint planning to align operational tasks, creative deliverables, and analytics milestones with broader marketing initiatives.
  • Assist with vendor management activities including gathering IOs, checking insertion details, processing campaign tags, and ensuring invoices align to executed flights.
  • Run regular account health checks (frequency, pacing, delivery, viewability) and prepare remediation plans for underperforming campaigns in partnership with senior media buyers.
  • Support privacy-compliant measurement strategies, including consent capture workflows and server-side tagging pilots, to maintain accurate performance tracking as cookie-based targeting evolves.
  • Provide training and onboarding support for junior team members, interns, or new hires on campaign setup, tagging protocols, and reporting standards.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Google Ads (Search, Display, Video) — campaign setup, bid strategies, shopping feeds, and optimization best practices.
  • Meta Ads Manager / Facebook Business Manager — ad creation, audience setup, budget optimization, and policy compliance.
  • Programmatic DSP basics (e.g., DV360, The Trade Desk) — line item creation, targeting, and IO reconciliation.
  • Google Analytics (Universal & GA4) and Looker Studio for campaign measurement, attribution checks, funnel analysis and dashboarding.
  • Advanced Excel / Google Sheets — pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, conditional formatting, macros or Apps Script for automation.
  • Google Tag Manager and pixel implementation — create, validate, and troubleshoot tracking tags and conversion events.
  • UTM tagging best practices and campaign naming conventions to ensure consistent cross-channel reporting.
  • Basic SQL and data query skills for pulling performance data and validating metrics (desirable but not always required).
  • Familiarity with ad verification and brand safety tools (e.g., DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science) and viewability metrics.
  • Experience with ad servers and trafficking tools (Sizmek, AdManager, or similar) and managing creative inventories.
  • Experience with creative asset management and QA tools; basic understanding of HTML/CSS to troubleshoot tag or landing page issues.
  • Familiarity with CRM integration for lead ads and offline conversion uploads (Salesforce, HubSpot integrations).
  • Experience building and maintaining media plans, IOs, and campaign budgets within agency or in-house settings.
  • Basic familiarity with privacy frameworks (GDPR, CCPA) and cookieless measurement alternatives.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional attention to detail and methodical approach to trafficking and QA.
  • Strong written and verbal communication — translate technical performance into clear business insights for non-technical stakeholders.
  • Time management and prioritization — manage multiple campaigns with competing deadlines.
  • Problem-solving and troubleshooting mindset — quickly identify root causes of tracking or delivery issues.
  • Collaboration and cross-functional teamwork — work effectively with creative, analytics, sales, and client teams.
  • Adaptability and eagerness to learn — stay current with rapidly evolving ad tech and platform features.
  • Client-facing professionalism and the ability to present results confidently to internal teams or clients.
  • Data literacy and critical thinking — interpret metrics, question anomalies, and recommend data-driven optimizations.
  • Organizational skills — maintain trafficking logs, asset libraries, and documentation for auditability and continuity.
  • Initiative and ownership — proactively propose process improvements and optimization tests.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Associate degree or equivalent practical experience in Marketing, Communications, Business, or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Advertising, Communications, Business Administration, Data Analytics or similar.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Marketing or Advertising
  • Communications or Journalism
  • Business Administration
  • Data Analytics / Marketing Analytics
  • Computer Science (for technical ad ops leaning)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 0–3 years in digital marketing, media buying, ad operations, or agency support roles; internships and practical platform experience considered.

Preferred:

  • 1–3 years hands-on experience managing or supporting paid search, paid social, or display/video campaigns in an agency or in-house environment. Experience with reporting tools and some tag/analytics implementation is strongly preferred.
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