Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Advertising Project Manager

🎯 Role Definition

The Advertising Project Manager is the central coordinator for end-to-end advertising campaign delivery across digital, social, programmatic, video, print, and out-of-home channels. This role combines project management discipline with deep operational knowledge of media buying, creative production, trafficking/ad operations, measurement and vendor management. The Advertising Project Manager is accountable for on-time, on-budget execution, cross-functional stakeholder communication, campaign QA and reporting that drives measurable business results and improves ROI.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Traffic Coordinator / Production Coordinator
Digital Marketing Specialist or Paid Media Specialist
Account Coordinator at an advertising agency or in-house marketing team

Advancement To:

Senior Advertising Project Manager / Campaign Director
Account Director or Client Services Director
Director of Ad Operations or Head of Media Production
Program Manager, Integrated Marketing

Lateral Moves:

Media Planner / Buyer
Ad Operations Manager / Programmatic Specialist
Creative Project Lead or Production Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead end-to-end campaign project management for cross-channel advertising initiatives, developing detailed project plans, timelines, milestones and resource schedules to ensure campaigns launch on time and meet performance targets.
Own campaign budgets from planning through reconciliation, maintaining accurate forecasts, approving spend allocations, tracking invoices, and identifying cost efficiencies that improve campaign ROI.
Coordinate creative production workflows, including briefing creative teams, approving storyboards and mockups, managing asset delivery schedules, and ensuring all creative adheres to brand guidelines and technical specifications.
Manage media trafficking and ad operations: set up orders in ad servers and DSPs, configure placements, tags, creatives, frequency caps and targeting parameters, and verify correct implementation prior to launch.
Oversee programmatic campaign execution by partnering with programmatic trading desks and DSP teams to manage bids, deal IDs, PMP setups, and optimization strategies to maximize performance and efficiency.
Serve as primary client and internal stakeholder point of contact for campaign status, risks, and escalations, conducting regular status meetings and producing concise executive summaries that highlight milestones and performance against KPIs.
Implement QA and pre-flight checks for every creative and tracking pixel, including cross-device and cross-browser validation, third-party tag verification, and live-check monitoring to prevent revenue or measurement loss.
Monitor campaign performance daily and weekly, analyze metrics (click-through rate, viewability, conversion rate, CPA, ROAS), identify optimization opportunities, and implement A/B tests, targeting refinements or creative variations to improve outcomes.
Establish and enforce campaign governance, SOPs and runbooks for trafficking, tagging, naming conventions and asset management to reduce errors, streamline onboarding and accelerate time-to-live.
Manage vendor and agency relationships, negotiate SOWs and SLAs, coordinate deliverables and escalate service issues to ensure vendors meet contractual obligations and performance standards.
Coordinate cross-functional teams (creative, analytics, product, legal, procurement) to secure approvals, resolve technical constraints, and align campaign execution with privacy, legal and compliance requirements (GDPR, CCPA).
Conduct pre-launch risk assessments and contingency planning, proactively addressing technical or creative blockers and coordinating fallback plans to ensure uninterrupted campaign delivery.
Lead post-campaign analysis and reporting, synthesize performance insights, produce actionable recommendations for future buys, and present learnings to clients and senior stakeholders to inform strategy.
Maintain and audit asset libraries and digital repositories (DAM), ensuring correct version control, creative metadata and centralized access for internal teams and external partners.
Create and manage trafficking documentation and campaign passports that include line-item details, creative specs, targeting, start/end dates and billing codes for operational transparency.
Facilitate sprint planning and agile ceremonies for marketing and production teams where applicable, translating business priorities into deliverable tasks and adjusting schedules in response to shifting priorities.
Implement measurement plans and tagging strategies in partnership with analytics teams to ensure reliable event tracking, conversion attribution and single-source-of-truth reporting for campaign performance.
Negotiate media rates, production estimates, and creative vendor contracts to optimize spend and secure value-added services such as premium placements or creative production discounts.
Troubleshoot live delivery issues in real time—investigating tagging errors, pacing anomalies, creative rendering problems or traffic discrepancies—and coordinate immediate technical fixes with ad ops and engineering teams.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives by analyzing operational bottlenecks, automating repetitive tasks, and introducing tools (e.g., campaign templates, trackers, macros) that increase team throughput.
Manage multi-market rollouts and localization efforts for global campaigns, coordinating translations, regional legal checks and market-specific targeting strategies to ensure consistency and compliance across regions.
Prepare and respond to RFPs and pitch requests by assembling scope, timelines, resource plans and cost estimates that demonstrate the team’s ability to deliver complex advertising programs.
Deliver training and onboarding for new hires and junior staff on trafficking systems, campaign management best practices, and internal tools to build bench strength and operational consistency.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc reporting requests and advanced exploratory analysis to answer business questions about attribution, channel mix, and media efficiency.
Contribute to the organization's advertising operations strategy by documenting processes, building capability roadmaps, and recommending martech and adtech investments.
Collaborate with analytics, product and engineering teams to translate campaign measurement needs into technical requirements and tagging plans.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within cross-functional marketing delivery teams to prioritize campaign work and unblock execution dependencies.
Assist in maintaining vendor scorecards and performance reviews to ensure long-term value and accountability with strategic partners.
Help design and maintain dashboards and automated reports that enable rapid decision-making for campaign optimization and executive reporting.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Campaign Management & Trafficking: hands-on experience with ad servers (e.g., Google Campaign Manager / Floodlight, AdButler, Sizmek), trafficking processes, and line-item configuration.
Programmatic & DSP Knowledge: practical experience with demand-side platforms (DV360, The Trade Desk, Xandr), PMP and RTB setups, bid strategies and deal management.
Analytics & Measurement: ability to interpret campaign-level metrics and attribution models using tools like Google Analytics 4, Adobe Analytics, and conversion pixel troubleshooting.
Tagging & Tracking: strong understanding of tagging governance, pixel implementation, UTM standards, and server-to-server tracking concepts.
Media Planning Fundamentals: familiarity with media mix modeling concepts, reach & frequency, GRPs, CPM/CPA/ROAS calculations and budget pacing strategies.
Creative Production Management: experience managing creative briefs, specs across display, video, social, native and print and coordinating production timelines.
Budgeting & Forecasting: proficient in creating, managing and reconciling campaign budgets using spreadsheets and finance tools; experience with invoice workflows.
Project Management Tools: proficient with project tracking systems such as Asana, JIRA, Trello, Monday.com, Smartsheet or MS Project and comfortable building templates and trackers.
SQL & Data Querying: ability to read and write basic SQL queries for ad performance investigations and to validate reporting data.
Reporting & Visualization: experience building dashboards and reports in Looker, Data Studio, Tableau or Power BI and automating scheduled delivery.
Technical Troubleshooting: working knowledge of HTML/CSS basics for creative troubleshooting and understanding of browser/device rendering issues.
Privacy & Compliance: working knowledge of privacy frameworks (GDPR, CCPA) and how consent management affects ad targeting and measurement.
Excel Advanced: advanced Excel skills including pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, INDEX-MATCH and basic macros for campaign reconciliation.

Soft Skills

Exceptional stakeholder communication with the ability to translate technical ad ops details into business-facing summaries.
Strong leadership and people management skills to coordinate cross-functional teams and external vendors under tight deadlines.
Highly organized with meticulous attention to detail and discipline around naming conventions, documentation and version control.
Problem-solving mindset with the ability to prioritize under pressure and make data-informed decisions quickly.
Client-facing presence and consultative approach to balance client expectations and operational realities.
Time management and multitasking skills to run simultaneous campaigns across different markets and channels.
Adaptability to evolving adtech, privacy rules and platform features while maintaining execution quality.
Collaborative team player who fosters open communication and mentorship across junior and senior team members.
Strategic thinking to connect campaign delivery with long-term marketing and business objectives.
Results-oriented focus with a bias toward measurable outcomes and continuous optimization.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Advertising, Communications, Business Administration, or related field.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree (MBA or MS in Marketing/Analytics) or professional certifications in project management (PMP, PRINCE2), digital marketing (Google Ads, DV360), or programmatic advertising.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Marketing
Advertising
Communications
Business Administration
Data Analytics / Information Systems
Project Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years managing advertising campaigns, production and trafficking in agency or in-house marketing environments.

Preferred: 5+ years of progressive experience owning cross-channel advertising delivery, with demonstrated success running programmatic and digital-first campaigns and managing vendor/agency relationships. Experience in fast-paced agency settings or enterprise marketing teams and familiarity with adtech stacks is highly desirable.