Ad Operations 101: Why Hiring an Expert Is Essential for Your Business

Whether you’re running small-scale ads, large multi-channel campaigns, or any sort of ads online, a complex system works behind the scenes to ensure your ads are placed correctly, tracked accurately, and optimised for performance. That system is called Ad Operations. This function ensures your budget is spent wisely and your ads reach the right audience.

In this blog, we’ll break down what Ad Ops means, why it’s essential for your business, and how hiring an Ad Operations Manager can help you get the most out of your advertising budget.

What Is Digital Ad Operations?

At its core, Ad Operations refers to the process of managing and executing online advertising campaigns. It covers everything from setting up ads, tracking their performance, optimising placements, and troubleshooting technical issues. In short, it’s the engine that keeps your digital advertising running smoothly, ensuring that every ad you run delivers the best possible ROI.

Yet research shows that between 25% and 50% of digital ad spend is wasted due to poor targeting and lack of optimisation. That means businesses are potentially losing half of their budget on ads that don’t convert. A strong Ad Operations function will ensure that you don’t just pour money into ads but actually see profitable returns, which is why we recommend hiring an expert.

Why Hiring An Ad Operations Manager Is Essential for Your Business

Many companies underestimate the complexity of digital advertising until they start running campaigns and face problems like wasted ad spend, inaccurate reporting, or technical errors. Without a dedicated expert, businesses often struggle to keep their campaigns efficient, compliant, and profitable. Here’s why a strong Ad Operations Manager is crucial for your team:

1. Disorganised campaigns = wasted ad spend

   
   

When you launch ads without a structured approach, it can lead to inefficiencies, such as targeting the wrong audience, misallocating budgets, or struggling to track performance. Without proper oversight, it’s easy to burn through ad spend without seeing tangible results or even understanding what’s working and what’s not.

An Ad Operations Manager ensures your campaigns are strategically set up, continuously optimised, and aligned with your business goals – so every dollar works harder for you. They oversee execution, track performance, and optimise strategies to maximise ad effectiveness while preventing costly mistakes.

2. Managing ads drains time and resources

Marketing teams often find themselves buried in the technical complexities of digital advertising. From setting up tracking pixels and troubleshooting reporting errors to staying on top of frequent platform updates, having your marketing leads manage ad operations will quickly accumulate to take up the majority of their time; leaving little to no time being spent on strategy, creative development, and scaling.

By hiring an Ad Operations Analyst, your team can offload these repetitive (but essential) tasks. This allows them to focus on high-impact work like campaign strategy, audience research, and creative execution, ensuring better results without the operational headaches.

3. Poor tracking and reporting hurt decision-making

How will you optimise your campaigns if you can’t trust your ad data? Businesses often struggle with tracking errors, fragmented reports, or a lack of real-time adjustments. Without reliable insights, it’s challenging to allocate budgets effectively and measure the actual return on investment.

An Ad Operations Manager ensures your tracking mechanisms are airtight, reports are accurate, and campaign data is analysed continuously. By refining audience targeting, bidding strategies, and placements, they help maximise revenue and eliminate wasted ad spend.

4. Lack of cross-team coordination slows everything down

Misalignment between teams often leads to workflow delays, underperforming ads, and missed growth opportunities. That missing link between creative, sales, and data teams that ensures everyone is aligned on campaign goals and execution could be an Ad Operations Analyst. 

They can facilitate smoother workflows by improving communication, reducing bottlenecks, and ensuring everyone works toward the same goal. 

5. Staying ahead of platform changes and industry trends is challenging

Platforms are constantly evolving – new targeting options, policy updates, algorithm changes, and privacy regulations can all impact campaign performance. Keeping up with these changes while managing day-to-day operations, can be overwhelming.

An Ad Operations Manager stays ahead of these updates, ensuring your campaigns remain compliant, competitive, and optimised. They continuously test new strategies, adapt to platform changes, and refine your approach so your business doesn’t fall behind. With an expert handling these complexities, you can focus on growth instead of scrambling to keep up.

Conclusion

In an industry where every click and impression counts, having the right expertise can be the difference between a profitable campaign and money down the drain. If you invest in digital advertising, a well-structured Ad Operations process is non-negotiable. Without it, you risk inefficiencies, poor tracking, and wasted budget. 

By hiring an Ad Operations Manager, you bring in a dedicated expert who optimises ad spend, runs campaigns smoothly, and ensures nothing falls through the cracks. 

If you need help with hiring the right Ad Ops expert for your team, GrowthBuddy can help.

We specialise in finding and embedding highly skilled Ad Operations Analysts who seamlessly integrate into your team and help you scale. This allows your marketing team to focus on strategy and growth instead of troubleshooting campaign issues. Whether you’re ready to hire or just want to explore how an expert could level up your marketing, we’d love to connect.