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How To Build A Career In Adtech: What The Pros Actually Do
You don’t “break into” adtech; you assemble a career from moving parts—data, creativity, relationships, and a healthy dose of chutzpah. Here’s the field manual stitched from hard-won advice by operators on the brand, agency, and vendor sides.
The First Rule: Show Up Where The Action Is
Extracurriculars aren’t fluff; they’re your pipeline. Join local orgs (212NYC, AD Club, IAB chapters), volunteer at events, say yes to dinners, and meet three new people a week. Treat it like reps at the gym—compound interest for your network.
Pro move: Attend with an angle—“I’m mapping retail media clean rooms this quarter; who here is doing it in production?” People remember purposeful curiosity.
Build Cross-Functional Muscles Early
Don’t get pigeonholed. Learn planning, buying, measurement, creative ops, and privacy basics. Your edge is being the translator between craft silos.
30-day skill stack to start:
Media: Auction mechanics, pacing, frequency, reach curves
Data: Incrementality vs. attribution, MMM vs. MTA
Creative: Variations, message maps, feed-based personalization
Privacy/Identity: CMPs, consent, cohort vs. ID-based tactics
CTV/Commerce: Supply paths, retail signals, shoppable flows
Treat Your Name Like A Product
Personal brand ≠ thirsty posts. It’s consistent proof you think clearly and ship work.
One line of authority: “I explain attention metrics for CTV buyers,” or “I pressure-test retail media claims.”
One artifact a week: A teardown, a mini-dataset, a Loom explainer, a GitHub gist.
One relationship move: Introduce two people who should know each other. Repeat.
That’s how your reputation starts doing cold outreach for you while you’re asleep.
Relationships Are The Real Attribution Model
The industry runs on kavod (respect). Answer emails. Return calls. Put the phone away at dinners. Network for wisdom, not just jobs. Ask how someone navigated adversity or changed roles—those stories become your playbook when the market shuffles the deck.
Learn AI Like A Toolmaker, Not A Passenger
AI amplifies craft; it doesn’t replace seichel (brains).
Use it to generate briefs, tag taxonomies, keyword clusters, and QA checks.
Keep your human edge for taste, risk, and judgment—the parts models can’t counterfeit.
Build small “agents” for repetitive ops: negative keyword upkeep, log-level sanity checks, creative rotation alerts.
Your creative risk appetite is still the growth engine; AI just widens the highway.
Take Smart Risks That Force Learning
Rotating from agency to brand to platform is a cheat code. You’ll see how money actually moves, how decisions get made, and where the skeletons are buried. Pick roles that expand your influence radius, not just your title.
Master The Two Funnels
Sales/Stakeholder Funnel: Internally sell your ideas like a product—problem, proof, pilot, payback.
Creative/Media Funnel: Tie message → format → audience → measurement in one plan. If you can’t whiteboard this in five minutes, you don’t own it yet.
Measurement: Become Uncheatable
Know what’s real:
Lift > last-click. Run geo or audience holdouts.
Attention ≠ outcome, but it’s a throttle. Use it to steer, not to declare victory.
SIVT/MFA hygiene. Audit supply paths, use ads.txt/app-ads.txt, compare log-level domains to plans, and cut the junk without mercy.
CTV & Commerce: Where The Money’s Flowing
If you’re starting now, bias toward CTV and commerce media: identity signals, clean rooms, data partnerships, and creative shoppability. Learn how retail events map to media levers and how to negotiate supply paths in CTV without paying a toll at every bridge.
Executives’ Shortlist: Habits That Get You Promoted
Write the one-pager. Clear memo > 40-slide deck.
Own the post-mortem. Name what failed, fix it, share the learning.
Ship dashboards that matter. Three KPIs, not 30.
Be nervy but kind. Challenge ideas, protect people. That’s real leadership.
Your 90-Day Starter Plan
Days 1–30: Foundation & Exposure
Complete a privacy + identity crash course; diagram your company’s consent → activation flow.
Shadow one planner, one analyst, one creative lead; document how a single campaign moves through the machine.
Publish three artifacts: a CTV supply-path explainer, an incrementality cheat sheet, and a creative-testing matrix.
Days 31–60: Build & Automate
Stand up a simple experiment framework (geo or audience splits).
Automate one painful task (n-gram negatives, QA screenshots, pacing alerts).
Host a 30-minute brown-bag: “What we learned from our last test and what we’ll do next.”
Days 61–90: Influence & Results
Pitch a pilot in CTV or retail media with a clear lift target and pre-agreed readout.
Clean your supply: prune domains/apps that fail attention, viewability, or fraud checks.
Deliver a memo: “What we’ll stop, start, and double-down on next quarter.”
The Expert Playbook, Boiled Down
Do This Weekly
Meet three new people—vendors, buyers, engineers, creatives.
Ship one small improvement to process or performance.
Study one failure (yours or the industry’s) and extract a rule.
Learn These Phrases And Use Them Well
“What’s the lift vs. control?”
“Show me the supply path.”
“How will we read this—what’s success and by when?”
“Which human is accountable for this decision?”
Avoid These Traps
Death by dashboards with no decisions.
“We’ll fix it next sprint.” (You won’t—make a cut today.)
Chasing cheap CPMs through a funhouse of garbage supply.
Outsourcing your judgment to whatever the model says.
Roles To Target And What They Actually Teach You
Analyst → Strategist
Teaches discipline: clean data, clear hypotheses, honest outcomes.
Media Planner/Buyer → Curation Lead
Teaches leverage: fewer pipes, higher quality, better economics.
Creative Strategist → Modular Production
Teaches speed: message maps, feed-driven variations, outcome-tied creative.
Partner/Platform Manager → Business Ops
Teaches power: how agreements, fees, and data rights shape your results.
What To Read, Watch, And Track
Policy & Privacy: state regs, Chrome/Apple changes, clean room patterns.
CTV/Streaming: ad loads, attention norms, live sports dynamics.
Commerce: incrementality studies, onsite vs. offsite ROAS reality.
Create a living doc. Update weekly. Share it. Become the person people ask before they spend a dollar.
Final Chizuk
Adtech keeps reinventing itself like a startup with nine lives. The winners aren’t the loudest; they’re the ones who learn fastest, protect the craft, and keep showing up—with seichel, with derech eretz, and with the courage to say, “This works, that doesn’t—here’s the proof.”
Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.
The Rabbi of ROAS