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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Advertising Manager

💰 $70,000 - $120,000

MarketingAdvertisingMediaDigital Marketing

🎯 Role Definition

The Advertising Manager is responsible for developing and executing paid media strategies across digital and traditional channels to achieve business goals. This role owns campaign planning, media buying, vendor negotiations, creative briefing, performance optimization, and cross-functional partnership with brand, product, analytics, and creative teams. The Advertising Manager combines strategic thinking, strong operational execution, and data-driven optimization to deliver scalable, measurable advertising programs that improve awareness, engagements and conversions.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Digital Marketing Specialist / Paid Media Specialist
  • Media Planner / Media Buyer
  • Marketing Coordinator (with paid channel focus)

Advancement To:

  • Senior Advertising Manager / Head of Paid Media
  • Media Director / Director of Performance Marketing
  • VP Marketing / Head of Growth

Lateral Moves:

  • Performance Marketing Manager
  • Programmatic Trading Lead
  • Brand Marketing Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Develop comprehensive paid media strategies that align to brand and growth objectives across search, social, display, programmatic, video, connected TV (CTV), audio, and out-of-home (OOH) channels; define channel mix and phased rollout plans to maximize reach and ROI.
  • Plan and manage annual and campaign-level media budgets, forecasting spend by channel and quarter, monitoring pacing daily/weekly, and re-allocating funds to high-performing tactics to meet CPA, CPM and ROAS targets.
  • Lead end-to-end campaign execution including audience strategy, creative brief writing, trafficking, pixel and tag implementation, QA, launch, and post-launch optimization to ensure campaigns go live on time and at expected quality.
  • Own channel vendor relationships and negotiations with agencies, DSPs, publishers and platform reps; secure favorable rates, preferred inventory, value-added placements, and pilot opportunities to extend campaign reach and efficiency.
  • Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) including impressions, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, CPA, LTV, ROAS and brand lift; produce weekly and monthly performance reports that translate metrics into insights and actionable recommendations.
  • Conduct ongoing bid and budget optimization for paid search (Google Ads, Bing), paid social (Meta, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok), programmatic (DV360, The Trade Desk), and native platforms using automated rules, scripts, and manual adjustments to improve efficiency and scale.
  • Design and manage A/B and multivariate tests across creative concepts, messaging, landing pages and audience segments; analyze test results and incorporate learnings into campaign playbooks and creative optimization cycles.
  • Collaborate with creative and brand teams to develop on-brand ad copy, creative assets and landing pages; provide clear creative briefs, review taglines and ensure assets meet platform requirements and campaign objectives.
  • Implement and maintain tracking and measurement frameworks including pixels, conversion APIs, UTM taxonomy, Google Tag Manager (GTM), and server-side tracking to ensure accurate capture of conversions and user journeys.
  • Partner with analytics and data teams to define attribution models (multi-touch, data-driven), build dashboards (Looker, Tableau, GA4), and integrate advertising data into the marketing data stack for cross-channel performance analysis.
  • Manage ad operations and trafficking processes—create placements, upload creatives, QA tags and creatives across devices and browsers, and resolve delivery or rendering issues pre- and post-launch.
  • Ensure brand safety, content compliance and ad policy adherence across platforms; monitor placement environments, block unsafe publishers, and implement keyword and contextual exclusions to protect brand reputation.
  • Drive audience development and segmentation strategies using first-party data, CRM audiences, lookalike models, and programmatic DMP integrations to improve targeting precision and reduce wasted spend.
  • Oversee campaign creative refresh schedules based on performance decay and seasonal needs; coordinate creative production timelines and prioritize assets that show the highest incremental lift.
  • Lead cross-functional stakeholder communications, aligning marketing, product, channel, and executive teams on campaign goals, timelines, and performance expectations through regular cadence calls and performance reviews.
  • Execute media buys and insertion orders, manage trafficking documentation and confirm delivery/verification with third-party measurement partners (e.g., MOAT, Integral Ad Science) and ensure accurate reconciliation with finance.
  • Troubleshoot complex technical issues related to tracking discrepancies, attribution gaps, conversion latency, and ad fraud; work with engineering and ad tech partners to implement fixes and long-term solutions.
  • Build and maintain campaign playbooks, SOPs, and runbooks for media planning, launch checklists, optimization tactics, and reporting to scale operations and onboard new team members efficiently.
  • Monitor competitive landscape, media trends, new platform features, and ad tech innovations; recommend strategic pilots and beta tests to capture first-mover advantages with emerging channels like CTV, retail media and programmatic audio.
  • Present campaign performance, insights and strategic recommendations to senior leadership and cross-functional partners; translate data into clear narratives that inform budget decisions, creative direction, and channel prioritization.
  • Develop contingency plans and rapid response strategies for campaign underperformance, platform outages, or regulatory shifts (e.g., privacy changes like ITP/GDPR/CCPA) that impact tracking or targeting.
  • Mentor and coach junior media and ad ops team members; delegate tasks, review deliverables, and create development plans to strengthen the team's capability in ad tech, analytics and creative optimization.
  • Coordinate with legal and privacy teams to ensure advertising practices meet regulatory requirements and internal policies on user consent, data usage, and personalization.
  • Lead cross-channel revenue attribution initiatives and experiment with incrementality testing and holdout groups to validate causal impact of advertising investments on business outcomes.

Secondary Functions

  • Support cross-functional marketing initiatives such as product launches, seasonal promotions, and brand partnerships with paid media activation and measurement support.
  • Provide ad-hoc analysis and performance deep-dives for leadership on request, synthesizing data into actionable insights and clear next steps.
  • Contribute to vendor selection processes by running RFPs, scoring proposals, and validating partner capabilities against technical and performance criteria.
  • Assist in developing media training and best-practice documentation for marketing stakeholders to align expectations and improve campaign request quality.
  • Participate in periodic audits of ad accounts, creative libraries and tagging implementations to maintain hygiene, security and compliance.
  • Coordinate with finance on campaign invoicing, reconciliation and budget forecasting to ensure spend accuracy and timely payments.
  • Keep an updated catalog of platform changes, feature rollouts and recommended tactics for the broader marketing organization.
  • Support localization and market expansion efforts by adapting ad strategies and creative to regional audiences, languages and compliance requirements.
  • Help maintain and curate audience and creative asset libraries for efficient campaign reuse and faster time-to-launch.
  • Advocate for cross-team process improvements that reduce manual tasks through automation, macros, scripts, and ad platform APIs.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Paid media strategy & execution across search, social, display, video, programmatic, CTV, native and OOH.
  • Media buying and vendor negotiation (agency and direct publisher buys) and experience with insertion orders and IO management.
  • Hands-on experience with Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, DV360, The Trade Desk, Campaign Manager, and/or other DSPs/SSPs.
  • Measurement and analytics: strong working knowledge of GA4, Looker/Tableau/Power BI, conversion tracking, A/B testing frameworks and UTM taxonomy.
  • Ad ops and trafficking skills including creative QA, tag/pixel implementation, and familiarity with Google Tag Manager and server-side tracking.
  • Attribution modeling & incrementality testing, including multi-touch attribution, data-driven attribution and holdout experiments.
  • Ad verification and brand safety tools (e.g., IAS, DoubleVerify, Moat) and anti-fraud awareness.
  • SQL or basic data wrangling skills for extracting, joining and analyzing campaign datasets (preferred).
  • Experience with marketing automation/CRM integrations and audience activation using first-party data (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, Segment).
  • Familiarity with privacy, consent frameworks and regulatory impacts on targeting (GDPR, CCPA) and conversion APIs.
  • Reporting automation and dashboarding skills, including scheduled reporting and KPI alerting.
  • Basic familiarity with creative production process and ad spec requirements across platforms.

Soft Skills

  • Strong strategic thinking with the ability to translate business objectives into media plans and measurable KPIs.
  • Excellent stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills; comfortable influencing senior leaders and external partners.
  • Data-driven decision-making and analytical mindset with the ability to synthesize complex datasets into clear insights.
  • Clear written and verbal communication skills for creative briefs, performance reports, and executive summaries.
  • Project management and organizational skills to manage multiple campaigns, deadlines and vendors concurrently.
  • Leadership and people development skills to mentor junior team members and scale operations.
  • Adaptability and comfort working in a fast-paced, test-and-learn environment with shifting priorities.
  • Negotiation skills for vendor agreements, media rates and agency contracts.
  • Problem-solving orientation and technical curiosity to debug tracking and ad delivery issues.
  • Attention to detail for QA, compliance and budget accuracy.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Advertising, Communications, Business, Media Studies or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • MBA or Master's in Marketing/Advertising, or relevant certifications (Google Ads, Meta Blueprint, IAB, PMP/Agile training).

Relevant Fields of Study:

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

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years in paid media, advertising operations, or performance marketing; dependent on scope and seniority of role.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years with demonstrated experience managing multi-channel paid media strategies, vendor relationships, and team mentorship; experience at an agency or in-house brand with significant ad budgets is highly valued.
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