Related Posts
Community Builder
More Posts
Enthusiast
Additional Posts in Advertising
B.I.G. Big Intuitive Guidelines
Layoffs at Ogilvy NYC...
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
In media, you can grow theoretically to CMO client-side or CEO of a media agency. In Ad Ops, you can grow to Head of Ad Ops (maybe SVP at some agencies) or a Director of Marketing Technology client-side at a company that is big enough to have that specialized role.
These things change over time, but media planning and buying are core parts of advertising, while ad ops is a support role.
You may also want to consider if you want a day to day job of ad trafficking which can be mind-numbing work and not at all challenging.
Didn't transition or anything, but considering the Ad ops population on this app is like <5, I'm happy to answer any questions you have
Agree with Director 1.
Unless you leverage what you are learning and doing within each platform and tech to gain more technical knowledge about each one. That knowledge then can possibly be leveraged to attribution, ad tech etc companies and maybe even big publishers since third party cookies are going away and there is a mad scramble to come up with an alternative.
You will be doing mind numbing repetitive unglamorous administrative like work for a couple of years. If that’s your cup of tea instead of the high pressure of media planning and dealing with clients then fine. You could just do your job punch a clock and that’s it, there will be some times when things break that you will need to fix on off hours and weekends but more so it’s a straight forward tactical process driven job. Then you can be less stressed and enjoy your free time and life. I know media planning is highly stressful especially in these times.
Think about your personality and who you are and what you really want out of your career and how that enables your personal life.
I know some people who purposely did ad ops bc it’s less stressful than media planning and buying and are happy to make less money and have more limited growth options. They just want to collect a paycheck and spend more of there time with their life outside of work. They are comfortable with their economic standing in life and comfortable with their how their profession is viewed from a social/society perspective.
It’s all about what you really want in life!!
Rising Star
it’s not permanent. nothing in life is forever. there is something to be said for W/L balance. there’s also something to be said for the experience that you could take back to media planning or possibly pivot to account management. or maybe you will
fall in love with it.
Rising Star
VP of media analytics - I’ve worked closely with both. it’s a different skill set and mentality. ops is a thankless job - you only get noticed when shit goes wrong. you have to be a perfectionist. you have to love spreadsheets. there’s limited growth. as programmatic continues to grow, there’s opportunity there in terms of setting up campaigns, but otherwise limited growth. some people love it.
why are you interested in switching ?
A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn (I have relevant industry experience to this brand). while I don’t think I’d love Ad Ops, I’m interviewing because I have NO work-life balance in my current role and since I’ve been with my company for almost 3 years I’ve been exploring a way out. There’s no guarantee I’ll even get an offer, but I’m wondering what I’d do since it seems like they’ll offer ~$20k more than my current salary
I work client side in MarTech now. Actually never did ad ops agency side, but it would've been extremely valuable looking back. What you have to do is find a way to specialize in something on top of the day to day trafficking. GTM, site tagging, an MMP, attribution, etc. Don't just be an ad trafficker in campaign manager at the end of the day. You'll have a hard time growing from there. It's correct you'll be doing a lot of mindless work, always urgent, and always the least respected in terms of timelines, but the long term career prospects are better since it's specialized and hard to find people with the skill set to fill a lot of the more experienced roles. Money is definitely better and job security is great.
Agree with most that was said above. I have been in ad ops my whole career, 13 years. I do like it as I don’t like client facing and with programmatic it has gotten way more interesting. I am not that happy with the lack of career path. I am dipping my toes in product and know some people that have made that transition but I think it is hard to make and you will prob have better career growth opps staying in planning. Def was more money in the beginning but I feel like I am not getting anywhere
Pro
fyi - this post is 1.5 years old.