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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Advertising Specialist

💰 $ - $

MarketingAdvertisingDigital MarketingPaid Media

🎯 Role Definition

The Advertising Specialist is a performance-driven marketing professional responsible for planning, executing, optimizing, and reporting on paid media campaigns across search, social, display and programmatic channels. This role focuses on maximizing return on ad spend (ROAS) and meeting cost-per-acquisition (CPA) targets through data-driven audience targeting, bid management, creative testing, tracking and cross-channel attribution. The Advertising Specialist partners with creative, product, analytics and sales teams, manages agency and vendor relationships, and continuously refines media strategy based on performance insights and industry trends.

Key SEO/LMM keywords: Advertising Specialist, paid media, PPC, Google Ads, Meta Ads, programmatic advertising, performance marketing, campaign optimization, ROAS, CPA, conversion tracking, GA4.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Marketing Coordinator (Paid Media focus)
  • Junior Media Buyer / Junior PPC Specialist
  • Digital Marketing Assistant

Advancement To:

  • Senior Advertising Specialist / Senior Paid Media Specialist
  • Paid Media Manager / Performance Marketing Manager
  • Head of Acquisition / Director of Performance Marketing

Lateral Moves:

  • Content Marketing Manager (performance content)
  • CRM / Email Marketing Manager
  • SEO / Organic Search Specialist
  • Product Marketing Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Develop, launch and manage end-to-end paid media campaigns across search (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads), social (Facebook/Meta, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X), display, video (YouTube) and programmatic channels, ensuring campaigns align with business goals and channel best practices.
  • Build detailed media plans that define target audiences, budget allocation, bidding strategies, creatives, timelines, KPIs (ROAS, CPA, CTR, CPL) and measurement approaches for each campaign.
  • Conduct audience research and segmentation using first- and third-party data to create precise targeting strategies (lookalikes, custom audiences, interest and behavior targeting) that improve conversion rates and reduce acquisition costs.
  • Perform keyword research and search query analysis for paid search campaigns, develop match-type and negative keyword strategies, and implement continual refinement to maximize relevance and efficiency.
  • Implement and maintain tracking, pixels, tags and UTM parameter standards across campaigns and landing pages (Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel, Conversions API) to ensure accurate conversion measurement and cross-channel attribution.
  • Configure and maintain conversion actions in Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Meta Ads Manager and validate server-side events and GA4 event schemas to ensure single-source truth for performance reporting.
  • Execute A/B and multivariate tests for ad copy, creative assets, landing pages and bidding strategies; analyze test outcomes and roll out winning variations to scale performance.
  • Manage daily and weekly bid management, budget pacing and placement optimization to meet spend targets while maximizing efficiency and ROAS across channels.
  • Operate programmatic buying tools and DSPs (DV360, The Trade Desk or equivalent), setting up deals, private marketplace deals and programmatic line items with attention to viewability, brand safety, and frequency caps.
  • Collaborate with creative teams to develop ad concepts, messaging, and asset variations; write or review ad copy and provide creative briefs that align with campaign objectives and audience insights.
  • Build and maintain automated reporting dashboards (Google Data Studio/Looker Studio, Tableau, Looker) that synthesize performance by channel, campaign, audience and creative for weekly/monthly stakeholder updates.
  • Analyze campaign performance data (impressions, clicks, conversions, revenue, ROAS, CPA) and provide actionable recommendations — scaling winners and pausing non-performers — to improve efficiency and achieve KPIs.
  • Lead cross-functional stand-ups with product, analytics, content and sales to align on promotions, product launches, tracking changes, and landing page requirements that impact campaign performance.
  • Manage relationships with agencies, media partners and vendors, negotiating rates, placements, IOs (insertion orders) and SLAs while ensuring compliance with company policies and ad platform standards.
  • Maintain strict ad policy and compliance oversight (platform policies, legal, privacy and industry regulations), quickly resolving policy violations and ensuring creative and targeting meet platform requirements.
  • Implement and maintain attribution models and multi-touch attribution experiments (data-driven, rule-based) to more accurately allocate credit and inform budget decisions across channels.
  • Forecast media spend and performance, produce monthly/quarterly investment plans, and model scenarios to anticipate scale opportunities and pacing risks.
  • Troubleshoot tracking, attribution and conversion discrepancies with analytics and engineering teams; propose technical solutions and QA changes in staging and production environments.
  • Monitor competitor ad activity, industry benchmarks and emerging channel opportunities; recommend pilot tests and iterative experiments for growth and efficiency.
  • Optimize landing pages with CRO best practices, working with UX/product teams to improve funnel completion rates and reduce friction in conversion paths.
  • Document campaign processes, naming conventions, tag and event taxonomies, and playbooks to enable scalable operations and cross-team knowledge transfer.
  • Train and mentor junior media buyers and cross-functional peers on platform best practices, campaign setup checklists and optimization frameworks.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc performance analyses and exploratory data requests to answer cross-team questions about customer acquisition costs, lifetime value and incremental lift.
  • Contribute to the organization's paid media strategy and multi-channel roadmap by proposing new platform tests, budget re-allocations and seasonal planning.
  • Collaborate with analytics and engineering to translate measurement needs into tracking requirements, data layer specifications and event schemas.
  • Participate in agile sprint planning and campaign launch ceremonies to ensure timely delivery of creative assets, tracking and QA.
  • Assist in vendor evaluations and RFP responses for ad tech partners, measurement vendors and attribution providers.
  • Support privacy and consent initiatives by coordinating with legal and engineering on cookieless strategies, CAPI setups and first-party data initiatives.
  • Prepare and present weekly and monthly executive summaries, highlighting runway risks, wins, and optimization opportunities.
  • Conduct regular QA of creatives, landing pages and tag implementations prior to campaign launch and during high-traffic promotions.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Paid Search (Google Ads / Microsoft Ads): campaign structure, search bidding strategies (manual CPC, Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions), responsive search ads, dynamic search.
  • Paid Social (Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn Ads): audience creation, ad sets, creative testing, CAPI and pixel integration.
  • Programmatic DSPs (DV360, The Trade Desk) and knowledge of PMP/private deals, RTB, PMP setup and programmatic optimizations.
  • Analytics & Measurement: Google Analytics 4 (GA4), event tracking, conversion modeling, cross-channel attribution and funnel analysis.
  • Tag & Event Management: Google Tag Manager (GTM), Facebook Conversions API, pixel deployment and server-side tagging best practices.
  • Reporting & BI Tools: Looker Studio (Data Studio), Tableau, Looker — building dashboards and automating performance reporting.
  • CRO & Testing Tools: A/B testing platforms (Optimizely, VWO, Google Optimize alternatives) and landing page optimization techniques.
  • SQL and basic data querying for extracting performance datasets and troubleshooting data discrepancies.
  • Spreadsheet & data modeling: Advanced Excel / Google Sheets (pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, array formulas) for budget modeling and attribution analysis.
  • Ad tech & tracking troubleshooting: familiarity with cookies, cookieless strategies, consent management platforms and measurement gaps.
  • Familiarity with ad creatives: basic knowledge of HTML/CSS and ability to communicate technical creative requirements to design/dev teams.
  • Tagging, UTM conventions and campaign naming taxonomy best practices for clean dataset aggregation.

Soft Skills

  • Strong analytical mindset with an ability to translate data into clear optimization actions and business recommendations.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication to present complex media results to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Project management and time management skills to coordinate multi-channel campaigns under tight deadlines.
  • Detail-oriented and quality-focused, ensuring tracking, ads and landing pages meet QA standards before launch.
  • Creativity in messaging and testing hypotheses to improve engagement and conversion performance.
  • Collaborative team player who partners effectively with creative, product, analytics and sales teams.
  • Problem solving and troubleshooting aptitude, especially when tracking or performance anomalies arise.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning to keep pace with platform changes, privacy shifts and new advertising channels.
  • Negotiation skills for dealing with vendors, publishers and partners to secure favorable rates and placements.
  • Stakeholder management and the ability to prioritize competing demands across campaigns, products and regions.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Advertising, Business, Communications, Economics or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree with additional certifications such as Google Ads Certification, Meta Blueprint, DV360/The Trade Desk training, or GA4/Analytics certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Marketing
  • Advertising
  • Business Administration
  • Communications
  • Data Analytics / Economics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–5 years of hands-on paid media experience (PPC, social paid, programmatic) for mid-level Advertising Specialist roles.

Preferred: 3–5+ years managing multi-channel campaigns, demonstrated track record of improving ROAS/CPA, experience with analytics and tag implementation, and exposure to programmatic DSPs or agency-side media buying.

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