Your campaigns span 12 channels. Why does it feel like 12 jobs? | MarTech

Paid media work frequently begins with pulling numbers from multiple ad networks, placing them into spreadsheets, and sending reports by early morning. Teams must reconcile different attribution models, campaign structures, and conversion definitions across Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and other platforms. Much of what is labeled “campaign management” is actually administrative effort such as data entry, reformatting, logging in and out, and rebuilding campaign briefs to match each platform’s structure. Industry estimates place administrative work at 5 to 9 hours per week for paid media managers, and this can be higher for those managing several networks or multiple clients. This time can reduce billable value and shift retainer or internal capacity away from actual optimization work.

"Google Ads. Meta. LinkedIn. TikTok. Reddit. Pull the numbers, drop them into a spreadsheet, make them tell a coherent story, and send the report to your client or boss by 10 a.m. Somewhere in there, figure out what worked last week and why. It's a terrible use of a Monday morning."

"Now you're dealing with 10 or 11 networks, each with its own attribution logic, campaign structure, and definition of a conversion. The data doesn't just live in different places. It doesn't even speak the same language. And yet most teams still manage everything the same way they did five years ago: too many tabs, spreadsheets, and Monday mornings."

"What doesn't get discussed enough is that most of the time paid media teams spend on "campaign management" isn't actually campaign management. It's Data entry. Reformatting. Logging in and out of platforms. Rebuilding the same campaign brief five different times because Google's campaign structure doesn't map to Meta's, and neither of them map to LinkedIn's."

"Industry data puts the average paid media manager at 5 to 9 hours a week on administrative work alone. My sense from talking to practitioners - and from doing the job myself - is that's probably conservative for anyone managing more than three or four active networks. Agencies handling multiple clients across multiple platforms can easily spend twice that."

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