Having a job in the digital industry is a source of fun situations. Especially when we have to explain what we do to our friends and family – florists, cooks, nurses. Mix digital and marketing and you have a winning combo. So what is a digital paid media consultant in an advertising agency?

Campaign manager

The job can be divided into two parts. The first one would be the campaign manager who has a more global vision, of strategy. The second part would be the mission of the media trader, more technical.

Mission 1 of the campaign manager: Develop a publication strategy for an ad

He must get the right message across at the right time to the right person. And for this, programmatic is a tool of choice.
The campaign manager must establish a plan, working directly with programmatic platforms, social network platforms, but also through intermediaries: advertising agencies that offer advertising space or different customer targeting.

Mission 2 of the campaign manager: Compare the different partners

The advertising agencies that offer advertising space sometimes have very different offers. One can be effective if the objective is to make the Internet user click, while the other will allow a longer visibility. The campaign manager must judge for each of his campaigns which actors are interesting.
He must also make sure that all the legal aspects are respected, on security, that data protection is respected (RGPD law).

Mission 3 of the campaign manager: Make statistics and reporting

Often, several campaigns are programmed, so that they improve over time it is necessary to make tests, to identify the good and bad points of a strategy. At the end of a campaign, it is necessary to identify which partners to prioritize and/or eliminate for the next one.
During a campaign, it is also necessary to set up and follow optimizations in real time.

Media trader

The media trader’s job is the more technical part of the digital paid media consultant’s job. In some agencies these two parts are separated between two people.

Mission 1 of the media trader: Installation of programmatic campaigns

The programmatic characterizes the automation of advertising campaigns. This automation uses algorithms, RTB (real time building) ad exchanges and is based on bidding systems. The advertiser (the brand or the agency that deals with the brand) proposes a bid to display its advertisement, which wins or not and is published in real time. This is done via DSP (demand side platform)
To follow the journey of his ad, the media trader must create and send tracking elements. For example, a conversion pixel embedded in the image of the advertisement will provide a large amount of data on its impact.

Mission 2 of the media trader: Track and optimize live

Here again, the media trader pushes more technically the missions of the campaign manager. He takes stock of the campaigns and implements optimizations in real time. He has to solve the technical problems related to the rules of the different programmatic platforms. :
The performances are followed according to objectives (KPI: key performance indicator) established before the publication of the advertising campaign.

Mission 3 of the media trader: Continuous testing to constantly improve

A/B testing means making “competitions” between two strategies by modifying only the formats of the advertisements or the segmentations that target the Internet users who will see the advertisement. It can also vary the platforms of the publishers, platforms, …
Once accustomed, the objective is to establish benchmarks: reference data that will quickly evaluate the proper functioning of a campaign.

It is these different strategic, commercial and technical missions that make this a rich, changing and stimulating job!