The Role of an Ad Traffic Manager

 Ad traffic managers work in advertising agencies. They are responsible for managing the flow of work to ensure that ads are completed on time for publication or broadcast. They also ensure that ads are completed within budget. Ad traffic managers work closely with members of the account management and creative teams to ensure that work flows efficiently through the agency from the initial brief to the point where it is released to the media.

Schedules

Scheduling is a critical part of the traffic manager’s role. Agencies plan advertising campaigns to appear at specific times and dates in newspapers and magazines, or in television and radio commercial breaks. Publishers and broadcasters provide agencies with copy dates, which are their deadlines for receiving finished advertisements. Traffic managers draw up schedules to ensure that advertisement production progresses efficiently through its different stages and completes on time. They issue schedules to each member of the agency team working on a campaign and provide key dates for clients to review and approve work.

Coordination

Ad traffic managers coordinate the work of many different people inside and outside the agency. They discuss the scope of work, schedules and budgets with the account management team to prepare a framework for planning workflow. They consult media planners to confirm copy dates for the advertisements. When the creative teams have developed their proposals for advertisements, traffic managers assess the production requirements. They identify external service providers, such as illustrators, photographers, video production companies and printers, who will be providing material for the campaign.

Control

To help control workflow, traffic managers use project management software. They monitor the progress of ad production through different departments and external suppliers, and adjust schedules to deal with any delays or problems. They may arrange regular production meetings to review progress and re-allocate resources to keep production on schedule.

Administration

Ad traffic managers set up administrative systems to help them track time, cost and progress on each campaign. They allocate separate job numbers to each campaign and ask everyone working on the project to use the job number when they record their time or costs. Traffic managers track time spent on a job by analyzing the time sheets completed by team members. They also issue purchase orders to external suppliers and ask them to quote the job number on their invoice.