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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Advertising Sales Assistant

💰 $35,000 - $55,000

AdvertisingSalesMediaMarketingAssistant

🎯 Role Definition

The Advertising Sales Assistant supports the ad sales team by coordinating day-to-day sales operations, preparing client-facing materials, trafficking and reporting on campaigns, and ensuring accurate billing and contract execution. This role is a hybrid of sales support, ad operations, and client service, focused on delivering timely, accurate execution and insights that help Account Executives close new business and scale revenue across digital, streaming, and print inventory.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Marketing Coordinator or Marketing Assistant transitioning into media sales support.
  • Customer Service or Client Success Representative with exposure to advertising or media clients.
  • Recent graduate from Advertising, Communications, or Business programs with internship experience in media.

Advancement To:

  • Advertising Sales Executive / Account Executive
  • Senior Sales Support / Sales Operations Specialist
  • Ad Operations Specialist or Campaign Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • Client Services Manager
  • Media Planner or Buying Coordinator
  • Business Development Representative

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Coordinate and process insertion orders (IOs), contracts, and digital booking forms from Account Executives to ensure accurate campaign setup, approvals, and signatures before trafficking begins.
  • Maintain and update the CRM (e.g., Salesforce) with accurate opportunity stages, contact records, activity logs, and pipeline notes to ensure team visibility and forecast accuracy.
  • Prepare tailored sales proposals, media plans, rate cards, and creative specs for prospective advertisers, incorporating audience insights and pricing guidance from senior sellers.
  • Traffic digital and streaming campaigns through ad servers (e.g., Google Ad Manager / DFP), set targeting parameters, schedule flight dates, and verify impression and click delivery against IOs.
  • Produce timely campaign performance reports for clients and internal stakeholders using reporting platforms and Excel/Sheets; analyze KPIs such as impressions, CTR, viewability, completion rate, and conversion metrics.
  • Reconcile campaign delivery and billing with finance teams by reviewing ad delivery logs, resolving discrepancies, preparing billing support packages, and following up on outstanding invoices.
  • Support Account Executives with prospecting: research prospects, build contact lists, prepare outreach templates, and coordinate introductory calls and demos.
  • Manage the ad creative intake process: collect assets, confirm adherence to specs (sizes, formats, codecs), coordinate creative testing/QA, and liaise with production teams when edits are required.
  • Assist with campaign optimizations by monitoring pacing, identifying underperforming placements, recommending adjustments (targeting, frequency caps, creative rotations), and communicating changes to clients.
  • Coordinate cross-functional handoffs between Sales, Ad Operations, Creative, and Finance to ensure smooth campaign launch and execution while documenting processes for repeatability.
  • Maintain and publish daily/weekly sales and delivery dashboards to track revenue attainment, top pipeline opportunities, and campaign status for leadership review.
  • Support RFP/RFI responses by gathering historical performance data, pricing comps, audience metrics, and drafting supporting materials for proposals.
  • Conduct competitive market research and ad inventory audits to update sales materials, suggest new product bundles, and inform pricing strategies.
  • Manage calendar scheduling, client meeting logistics, and pre-call preparation for Account Executives, including assembling briefs, historical performance, and talking points.
  • Coordinate and track advertiser creative approvals, ensuring legal and brand compliance, and documenting final specs and permissions in the campaign folder.
  • Execute post-campaign recaps and performance summaries, highlighting insights, recommended next steps, and opportunities for renewals or upsells.
  • Maintain up-to-date rate cards, sponsorship packages, and promotional calendars; update internal sales decks and one-pagers to reflect new inventory or seasonal offerings.
  • Troubleshoot ad delivery and reporting issues by triaging technical problems with ad servers, tag implementations, or third-party vendors and escalating when necessary.
  • Assist with managing programmatic set-ups and liaising with demand-side platforms (DSPs) and ad exchanges to ensure correct deal IDs and private marketplace transactions.
  • Support new product launches and pilot campaigns by documenting process flows, training sales teams on specs/pricing, and collecting early customer feedback for iteration.
  • Monitor and ensure compliance with advertiser policies, third-party vendor agreements, and platform ad standards to reduce risk and limit cancellations.
  • Process changes, cancellations, and amendments to contracts and insertion orders quickly and accurately while communicating the impact on revenue and delivery metrics.
  • Maintain accurate ad trafficking and campaign documentation in shared repositories (e.g., Google Drive, SharePoint) to ensure auditability and knowledge transfer.
  • Provide frontline client service for billing inquiries, performance questions, and scheduling changes, escalating to senior staff for complex negotiations or credits.
  • Support sales leadership with ad hoc analysis and forecasting requests—building pivot tables, revenue waterfall models, and pipeline sensitivity scenarios.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist in the documentation and continuous improvement of internal sales and trafficking playbooks.
  • Attend client-facing meetings and occasionally represent the team at industry events or vendor trainings.
  • Provide training and onboarding support for new sales assistants or junior ad ops staff.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Proficient with CRM systems, especially Salesforce, including opportunity and pipeline management.
  • Strong Excel and Google Sheets skills: pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, data cleansing, and basic macros.
  • Experience with ad serving platforms such as Google Ad Manager (DFP), Sizmek, or similar.
  • Familiarity with programmatic concepts (DSPs, SSPs, PMP, deal IDs) and basic programmatic trafficking.
  • Campaign reporting and analytics experience; comfortable pulling and interpreting performance metrics and building client reports.
  • Experience creating sales materials and pitch decks using PowerPoint or Google Slides.
  • Basic understanding of HTML/CSS for troubleshooting tag implementations and creative rendering issues.
  • Knowledge of digital advertising formats (display, video, native, streaming) and creative spec standards.
  • Experience with billing and invoicing workflows; ability to reconcile delivery to IOs and prepare billing support.
  • Exposure to Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or other web analytics tools for campaign attribution and measurement.
  • Familiarity with ad verification and viewability vendors (MOAT, IAS) and basic performance QA processes.
  • Comfortable using project management or ticketing tools (e.g., Jira, Asana, Monday.com) to manage trafficking tasks.

Soft Skills

  • Strong verbal and written communication skills for client-facing interactions and internal coordination.
  • Exceptional attention to detail and accuracy, especially when processing contracts, IOs, and billing.
  • Highly organized with the ability to manage multiple campaigns and tight deadlines simultaneously.
  • Client-focused mindset with professional responsiveness and service orientation.
  • Problem-solving aptitude and ability to troubleshoot technical and operational campaign issues.
  • Collaborative team player who can coordinate across sales, ops, creative, and finance teams.
  • Time management and prioritization skills; able to escalate appropriately when needed.
  • Adaptability and willingness to learn evolving ad tech and product offerings.
  • Persuasive interpersonal skills to support upsell and renewal conversations.
  • Integrity and the ability to handle confidential contract and billing information.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Associate degree or equivalent; high school diploma with 1–2 years relevant experience also acceptable.

Preferred Education:

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

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Advertising / Media Studies
  • Marketing / Communications
  • Business Administration / Management
  • Data Analytics / Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 1–3 years in advertising sales support, media operations, ad trafficking, or related client service roles.

Preferred:

  • 2+ years supporting a sales team in a digital media, broadcast, or publishing environment with hands-on experience in ad trafficking, CRM management (Salesforce), and campaign reporting.
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