Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Advertising Sales Coordinator

🎯 Role Definition

An Advertising Sales Coordinator is the operational backbone of an ad sales team, combining client service, ad trafficking, campaign delivery, and sales support to ensure campaigns launch on time, run accurately, and meet client KPIs. This role requires strong attention to detail, familiarity with digital ad platforms and workflows (ad servers, programmatic DSPs, ad networks), excellent communication skills, and the ability to translate sales objectives into technically executable campaign plans. The Advertising Sales Coordinator supports revenue growth by enabling the sales team, optimizing campaign performance, maintaining accurate sales and billing records, and producing insightful reporting to inform upsell and renewal conversations.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Media Intern or Marketing Intern
Junior Ad Operations Specialist
Sales Support / Inside Sales Representative

Advancement To:

Senior Advertising Sales Coordinator
Advertising Sales Manager / Account Manager
Ad Operations Manager or Programmatic Specialist

Lateral Moves:

Digital Campaign Manager
Client Success Manager
Revenue Operations / Sales Enablement Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Coordinate end-to-end campaign trafficking and delivery for display, video, social, mobile, and programmatic buys by translating IOs and SOWs into technical specs, ad tags, creatives, frequency caps, targeting parameters, and schedule timelines.
Serve as the primary point of contact between sales, creative, ad operations, and external agency or client teams to confirm creative assets, ad tag placement, click-through URLs, and any third-party tracking pixels prior to launch.
QA creative assets and ad tags across browsers, devices, and environments to identify and resolve rendering issues, clickthrough errors, or measurement discrepancies before and during flight.
Set up and maintain campaigns in ad servers (e.g., Google Ad Manager / AdX), DSPs (DV360, The Trade Desk), social ad platforms (Facebook Business Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager), and other trafficking systems, ensuring accurate pacing and delivery.
Monitor daily campaign performance and pacing against goals; proactively identify underdelivery or pacing risks and implement optimization tactics such as bid adjustments, creative swaps, inventory changes, or frequency modifications.
Prepare and deliver clear, client-facing performance reports and executive summaries that surface insights, conversion trends, viewability, click-through rates, and recommended next steps to drive campaign effectiveness.
Manage IO and contract lifecycle activities including drafting IOs, cross-checking pricing and specs, obtaining approvals, and maintaining centralized records for auditability and revenue recognition.
Coordinate trafficking of dynamic creative and creative versioning, ensuring correct macros and data feeds are applied and that QA confirms correct creative personalization and CTA behavior.
Troubleshoot campaign issues in partnership with vendors, ad tech partners, and internal engineering teams — including tag errors, billing discrepancies, attribution mismatches, and measurement gaps — and document incident resolution.
Maintain and update CRM records (Salesforce, HubSpot) with campaign status, client communications, revenue expectations, and renewal opportunities to support forecasting and pipeline accuracy.
Support new business development by assisting with RFP responses, media plan builds, rate card checks, availability confirmations, and creation of sample ad tags or demo units.
Track campaign revenue, reconcile monthly billings and adjustments with finance teams, and escalate discrepancies to ensure timely invoicing and cash collection.
Execute A/B tests and creative experiments in partnership with analytics to validate hypotheses around creative formats, targeting segments, landing page performance, and pacing strategies.
Coordinate seasonal and promotional campaigns with brand, marketing, and editorial teams to align targeting, messaging, and flighting while ensuring technical readiness for spikes in traffic or demand.
Maintain up-to-date documentation of trafficking processes, SOPs, tag libraries, naming conventions, and campaign checklists to ensure consistent handoffs and reduce onboarding time for new hires.
Manage ad inventory allocations, reserve guaranteed placements for committed clients, and work with yield or inventory teams to optimize monetization while honoring sales commitments.
Conduct post-campaign analyses and wrap reports that include KPI achievement, insights for future buys, margin analysis, and recommended optimizations for renewals or upsells.
Train and mentor junior coordinators or interns on trafficking best practices, QA procedures, report generation, and client communication standards to scale team capability.
Liaise with legal and compliance teams to ensure campaigns comply with brand safety, privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA), ad policy restrictions, and client contractual obligations.
Maintain vendor relationships with measurement and verification partners (IAS, Moat, DoubleVerify) and coordinate any tag implementations needed for viewability, fraud detection, or brand safety verification.
Continuously optimize internal workflows and tools by collecting stakeholder feedback, proposing automation opportunities (macros, templates), and collaborating with product or engineering to implement efficiencies.
Support sales enablement by creating client-facing collateral such as trafficking timelines, creative specs guides, campaign setup briefs, and case study inputs that help close and service deals.

Secondary Functions

Assist with competitive research and market intelligence to inform media planning and pricing strategies for the sales team.
Participate in weekly sales and campaign operational stand-ups to report on campaign health, escalations, and cross-functional dependencies.
Collect and maintain creative asset archives and campaign creative libraries for quick retrieval and reuse across client campaigns.
Coordinate post-mortem reviews to capture lessons learned and action items that improve future campaign delivery and client satisfaction.
Support special projects such as platform migrations, ad tech rollouts, or new product launches by validating technical requirements and helping run pilot campaigns.
Maintain and reconcile ad server line item naming conventions and taxonomy to ensure consistent reporting and attribution across platforms.
Contribute to upsell and renewal conversations by providing accurate historical performance data and operational feasibility assessments.
Provide ad-hoc operational support for event sponsorships, custom content units, or other integrated media activations that require trafficking or technical implementation.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Ad trafficking and campaign setup in ad servers (e.g., Google Ad Manager, Adform) and ad platforms (DV360, The Trade Desk, Facebook/Meta, LinkedIn).
Experience with ad verification and measurement tools such as DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, Moat, or similar.
Proficiency in Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUPs, basic formulas) for pacing, reconciliation, and reporting.
Familiarity with CRM systems (Salesforce, HubSpot) and maintaining accurate sales and campaign records.
Basic knowledge of HTML, creative tags, macros, and third-party tracking pixels for troubleshooting creative issues.
Experience producing client-facing performance reports using reporting tools or BI platforms (Looker, Tableau, Google Data Studio / Looker Studio).
Understanding of programmatic buying concepts, PMP deals, RTB, and audience segmentation.
Basic SQL knowledge preferred for pulling ad log data or campaign-level metrics when needed.
Experience creating and managing insertion orders (IOs), statements of work (SOWs), and billing reconciliation.
Familiarity with privacy and regulatory requirements (GDPR, CCPA) and cookie / tracking implications on campaign measurement.

Soft Skills

Exceptional written and verbal communication skills for articulate client updates and internal handoffs.
Strong attention to detail and a disciplined QA mindset to catch trafficking and billing errors before they impact delivery.
Excellent organizational and time-management abilities to juggle multiple campaigns and deadlines simultaneously.
Problem-solving orientation and the ability to troubleshoot technical issues calmly under time pressure.
Team player with collaborative instincts to work cross-functionally across sales, creative, engineering, and finance.
Client-service mindset with professional demeanor and responsiveness to build trust with agency and direct clients.
Adaptability to changing priorities, new ad formats, and evolving ad tech stacks.
Analytical thinking and the ability to translate performance data into actionable recommendations.
Prioritization skills to balance urgent tasks (campaign launches, escalations) with strategic work (process improvement).
Initiative and continuous improvement mindset to document processes and propose automation or tooling upgrades.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in experience; degrees in Marketing, Advertising, Communications, Business, or related fields preferred.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Advertising, Marketing, Communications, Business Administration, or Media Studies.
Certifications in Google Ads, DV360, or Facebook Blueprint are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

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

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

1–3 years in advertising operations, sales support, media coordination, or related roles.

Preferred:

2–4 years experience working with digital ad platforms, trafficking campaigns, and supporting ad sales teams; agency or publisher experience strongly preferred.