PPC specialist in contextual advertising: who is he and what are his tasks

Contextual advertising or PPC (Pay-per-Click) is all those ads that pop up while watching videos, appearing on various websites, as well as while searching on Google. The main goal is to attract as many users to the website as possible, so contextual advertising works mainly on traffic. Today, there are many formats of PPC ads, but all of them can be divided by content component: text, image and video.

PPC specialist in contextual advertising: who is he

After understanding what contextual advertising is, you can understand who a PPC specialist is. This is a person, who always keeps his ear to the ground, does not stop evolving and generates in his head creatives and messages for future ads as well. Professional contextual advertising manager:

• works in various Google profile programs and knows why and which tool to use;
• understands the basics of website’s usability;
• selects semantics and highlights keywords;
• can write effective slogans and texts for ads;
• confidently configures advertising on search engines;
• knows what remarketing is and what are its benefits;
• compiles media budgets and calculates ROI;
• is able to analyze the results.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in this profession is balancing between the limitations of search algorithms and creating bright and effective advertising that will appeal not only to the customer but to the end user as well.However, working as a PPC specialist also has its advantages, for which so many advertising specialists today choose this sphere of ​​Internet marketing: 

• continuous development and dynamic work. You need to wait a week or two to get the first results of your work. And to understand whether your strategy is really effective, just a few months and analysis of advertising campaigns; 
• assistance in development of various business areas. A professional contextual specialist can choose any direction for his work. It can be energy, construction, retail, IT or even public sector. As a reward for quality work, there is a sense of belonging to truly important areas of life and human development; 
• formation of users’ demand. Advertising launched by PPC guru affects many people. As a result, this is how user habits are formed.

What are the responsibilities of a contextual advertising specialist

On the one hand, all PPC work is focused on Google Ads and Google Analytics. But in fact, the list of tasks that a specialist faces every day is much wider. The main goal of every online advertising manager is to increase website traffic, to attract as many potential customers as possible, who are likely to make a purchase. The one who is engaged in contextual advertising performs the following work: 

• forms a launching strategy of contextual advertising; 
• selects keywords that will be most relevant to the promoted product;
• compiles a list of creative headlines and announcements; 
• looks for the best illustrations for each ad; 
• analyzes the effectiveness of advertising and constantly works to increase conversions; 
• compile reports; 
• generates media budgets and media plans. 

Often, an online advertising specialist also needs to have the classic skills of a marketing specialist in order to provide a 100% comprehensive approach to their work. These responsibilities include: analyzing competitors, analyzing target audience and forming a portrait, drawing up a comprehensive marketing strategy or a separate plan of contextual advertising as part of the company’s strategy. To sum up, PPC specialist does everything to reduce the cost of clicks, website traffic, targeted actions of his client and thus increase conversions.

What should a good PPC specialist know and do

From the list of contextual specialist’s daily responsibilities, one can guess that his skills go far beyond the ability to set up advertising campaigns. As we wrote above, a specialist in contextual advertising understands profile programs. These include: 

• Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) is an online service for launching contextual advertising on Google search engines, on advertising platforms, YouTube and more. 
• Google Analytics is a program for analyzing websites and mobile applications, which also allows you to track landing page quality and conversions. 
• Google Key Planner is a keyword planner for advertising. 
• Google Tag Manager is an application for working with HTML-tags on the website, you can read more about it in our article. 
• Google AdSense is another service for contextual advertising, but differs from Google Ads because the ads are automatically published on web pages that are thematically relevant to the content.

In addition to mastering all of these programs, a professional senior PPC specialist must test and analyze different ad variations on a daily basis, experiment with audiences, advanced targeting, and creativity. It is also important not to be afraid of monotonous and routine work. After all, advertising is not just a job of creating slogans and generating ideas. It’s also about a lot of data that you need to be able to organize, analyze and draw conclusions from, then optimize advertising campaigns to increase effectiveness.Another essential skill of advertising specialist is persistence and multitasking. Although these are not supernatural abilities, not everyone can boast the ability to work with several completely different projects at once. Contextual advertising specialists often face a situation where the volume of tasks grows exponentially. This may be the result of customer’s influx or the result of launching advertising that requires adjustments. And sometimes happens that the advertiser is stuck with «ineffective» ads, and then you need to patiently test the second round of the same options, but with some changes.

How to become a PPC specialist

PPC specialist is a combination of analytical thinking and creativity, as well as continuous learning and self-improvement. So, if you are ready to start your journey in learning contextual advertising, be prepared to devote a lot of time and energy to theory and practice. When you ask yourself, how much does an advertising professional earn, remember that it all depends on your professional skills and experience. In general, there is a three-step gradation of PPC specialist’s assessment: junior, middle and senior. It is not difficult to understand what these names mean — junior, middle and senior advertising specialist. And if the work of contextual advertising looks very complicated and incomprehensible, and you still need to launch advertising — order  PPC advertising service and audit of Google Ads advertising cabinet in Lanet CLICK digital agency.