Ad Operations Specialist

Company description

About us:

Studio One Toyota, which forms part of Publicis South Africa, is a bespoke agency tailored to Toyota South Africa. We handle all of Toyota’s advertising including: above-the-line, below-the-line, strategy, digital, social media, media placement, and community management. We are a tight-knit team of award-winning creatives passionate about the automotive industry and breakthrough work.

We work in-office 5 days a week from our studio in Bryanston. We are a people-first agency, with a keen interest in AI and other new technologies. Our goal is to create locally relevant work stemming from culturally authentic South African insights.

Overview

We are looking for a talented and highly detail-oriented Ad Ops/CM360 specialist to join the Studio One media team, supporting Toyota South Africa across campaign trafficking, tracking, measurement and quality assurance.

In Partnership With
• Business Unit Director
• Performance Lead
• Hybrid Media Strategist
• Digital Media Planner
• Programmatic and Social Specialists
• Media Buying Team
• Client Service and Creative Teams
• Publicis Media Advertising Operations Team
• GTM and implementation teams

Role Purpose
The CM360 Ad Operations Specialist is responsible for managing end-to-end CM360 ad serving, trafficking and campaign tracking across Studio One digital activity. The role translates planner tracking briefs into accurate campaign setups, ensures creative and tracking implementation is correct across placements, and maintains CM360 as a reliable source of truth for performance, reporting and billing alignment.

This is a hands-on specialist role for someone who understands the detail behind accurate digital measurement. The successful candidate will own campaign implementation, Floodlight and conversion tracking, campaign QA, discrepancy monitoring, troubleshooting, IAS compliance, pacing and tracking consistency across the Toyota portfolio.

Responsibilities

CM360 campaign setup and trafficking
• Manage end-to-end CM360 ad serving and campaign trafficking across digital platforms.
• Receive and interpret tracking briefs from planners and translate them into accurate campaign setups.
• Set up campaigns, placements, creatives and tracking structures correctly within CM360.
• Tag and traffic creative per platform, ensuring that each asset is assigned the correct impression tracker, click tracker, Floodlight activity and third-party tag.
• Confirm that all assets are live, serving correctly and aligned with approved campaign requirements.

Tracking and measurement
• Own Floodlight setup and conversion tracking across relevant campaigns.
• Work with GTM and implementation teams to ensure tags are correctly deployed and firing.
• Maintain clear and consistent campaign taxonomy, naming conventions and tracking structures.
• Ensure CM360 tracking supports accurate campaign measurement and aligned reporting outputs.
• Identify tracking gaps or implementation risks before campaigns go live.

Quality assurance and troubleshooting
• Conduct detailed pre-launch and live-campaign QA across campaign setup, creative trafficking and tracking implementation.
• Monitor discrepancies between CM360 and media-platform reporting.
• Investigate tracking, serving and data-quality issues and implement or coordinate fixes.
• Validate that impression, click, Floodlight and third-party tracking is functioning correctly.
• Escalate material measurement, reporting or financial risks early and clearly.

IAS, brand safety and verification
• Ensure campaigns meet IAS requirements for viewability, brand safety and verification.
• Confirm that creatives and placements are correctly tagged for verification requirements.
• Monitor delivery against relevant IAS metrics and flag compliance or performance issues.
• Work with internal teams and partners to resolve verification and tagging issues.

Campaign delivery, reporting and billing alignment
• Monitor delivery and pacing within CM360.
• Maintain CM360 as the source of truth for campaign performance, reporting and billing alignment.
• Work with planners, specialists, buying and reporting teams to ensure consistent data outputs.
• Support reconciliation by identifying discrepancies between planned, served, platform-reported and billed activity.
• Maintain accurate implementation records and documentation across campaigns.

Process and best-practice ownership
• Maintain CM360 implementation best practices across the Studio One portfolio.
• Promote correct use of impression trackers, click trackers, Floodlights, third-party tags and trafficking structures.
• Help improve campaign setup, QA and tracking workflows across the wider team.
• Provide clear guidance to planners and specialists where briefs or tracking requirements are incomplete.
• Stay current with platform, tracking, privacy and verification changes relevant to the role.

Required Experience and Skills
• Strong hands-on experience using Campaign Manager 360 (CM360).
• Experience in digital ad trafficking, campaign setup and ad serving.
• Strong knowledge of impression tracking, click tracking, Floodlights and conversion measurement.
• Experience with third-party tags, campaign QA and troubleshooting.
• Working knowledge of IAS, including viewability, brand safety and verification.
• Ability to monitor campaign pacing, delivery and reporting discrepancies.
• Strong attention to detail and confidence working with complex campaign structures.
• Strong administration, documentation and time-management skills.
• Ability to work across multiple campaigns, deadlines and stakeholders.
• Clear communication skills and the confidence to raise risks, challenge incomplete briefs and drive resolution.

Advantageous Experience
• Experience working with GTM and implementation teams.
• Experience within an automotive, retail or other high-volume campaign environment.
• Experience supporting large-scale brand, launch, sponsorship, always-on and performance campaigns.
• Understanding of wider programmatic, paid social and publisher implementation workflows.
• Experience aligning ad-server, media-platform, reporting and billing data.

Ideal Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate is methodical, highly organised and detail-obsessed. They take ownership of campaign accuracy, understand the financial and reporting risks created by weak implementation, and are comfortable working through technical problems until they are resolved.
They are not simply a tag issuer or campaign loader. They understand how trafficking, tracking, verification and measurement work together, and they can explain issues clearly to planners, specialists and internal partners. When something is not serving, tracking or reconciling correctly, they want to understand why and get it fixed.

What You Can Expect in an Average Week
• Attend key briefings, status meetings and integration meetings with agency partners.
• Review tracking briefs and confirm that all required campaign information has been supplied.
• Build, traffic and QA campaigns, placements and creative within CM360.
• Create and validate impression trackers, click trackers, Floodlights and third-party tags.
• Work with GTM and implementation teams to confirm deployment and firing.
• Monitor live activity, pacing, serving and CM360-to-platform discrepancies.
• Review IAS requirements and resolve viewability, brand-safety or verification issues.
• Support reporting and billing alignment through accurate CM360 data and documentation.
• Troubleshoot implementation issues and communicate risks or required actions early.
• Maintain campaign taxonomy, tracking consistency and implementation best practices.

Qualifications

• Relevant Google Marketing Platform or Campaign Manager 360 certification is advantageous.
• Additional qualifications in digital marketing, analytics, ad operations or measurement are advantageous.
Experience
• At least 3-5 years of relevant digital ad operations, campaign management or trafficking experience.
• Demonstrable hands-on CM360 experience is required.

Hard Skills
• Campaign Manager 360 setup, trafficking and campaign management.
• Floodlight and conversion-tracking implementation.
• Impression, click and third-party tag management.
• Campaign QA, discrepancy analysis and troubleshooting.
• IAS implementation and monitoring.
• Strong numerical and analytical ability.
• Strong digital administration and documentation skills.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook and web-based application skills.
• Ability to interpret technical requirements and translate them into accurate implementation.
• Clear written and verbal business communication.

Soft Skills
• Takes ownership and follows work through to completion.
• Is highly detail-oriented and methodical.
• Communicates risks, gaps and delays early.
• Is open to constructive feedback and challenges appropriately.
• Builds strong working relationships across teams.
• Collaborates without ego and works effectively independently.
• Adapts to changing priorities while maintaining accuracy.
• Shares knowledge and helps improve team capability.
• Is proactive, solution-oriented and comfortable troubleshooting under pressure.
• Can self-start, self-manage and prioritise effectively.

Additional information

How We Work at Studio One
Studio One is an integrated agency environment. Strategy, planning, creative, implementation, buying, production, approvals and reporting are connected. We expect every team member to understand the wider campaign, own their part and help move the work forward.
• Own your work: If a campaign or deliverable sits with you, you remain accountable for it until it is complete.
• Communicate early: Raise risks, delays, missing information, tracking failures and reporting discrepancies as soon as they become clear.
• QA everything: Check campaign structures, naming conventions, dates, assets, placements, trackers, Floodlights, platform requirements and final outputs before they move forward.
• Know the strategy: Understand the business objective, audience and role of each channel so implementation supports the approved plan.
• Work as one team: Collaborate across strategy, planning, performance, buying, creative, Client Service and Ad Ops.

Publicis Groupe Africa is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits any forms of Discrimination or Harassment. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all our employees in line with our Employment Equity Plan.

All appointments will be based on qualifications, experience and best fit but preference will be given to candidates from designated groups. Interested candidates must please submit a concise CV including a link to your portfolio if necessary. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Should you not hear from us within 2 weeks after submitting your application, please consider your application as unsuccessful.