Ad glossary
Media buyer
A marketer responsible for planning, launching, managing and optimising paid advertising campaigns and budgets.
A media buyer is the person responsible for running paid advertising campaigns. In paid social, that typically means setting up campaigns in platforms such as Meta Ads Manager, deciding budgets and structure, launching creative, monitoring performance and making optimisation decisions. Media buyers work in-house at brands, at agencies or as freelancers.
Typical responsibilities
- Planning account and campaign structure, including ad sets and budgets.
- Choosing objectives, optimisation events and bid strategies.
- Launching new ads and running creative testing.
- Monitoring metrics such as CPM, CTR, CPA and ROAS.
- Scaling winners and cutting underperformers.
- Checking tracking, including the Meta Pixel, Conversions API and UTM parameters.
- Reporting results and explaining changes to stakeholders.
How the role is changing
As platforms automate targeting, placements and bidding through features such as Advantage+, fewer levers are left to adjust by hand. Many media buyers now spend more time on creative feedback, cross-channel analysis, measurement and budget allocation, and less on micro-managing audiences. Close collaboration with a creative strategist has become common.
Useful skills
- Comfort with numbers and spreadsheets, including unit economics.
- A testing mindset and patience with data.
- An understanding of creative and copy, not just settings.
- Awareness of attribution limits and incrementality.
- Clear communication with clients, founders and creative teams.
Last reviewed Oct 27, 2026