Advertising Sales Manager (Ad Sales Manager)

Ad sales management is quota-carrying leadership — you own the team's number and your own key accounts simultaneously. Days shift between pipeline reviews with individual reps, calls with your own accounts when deals need a senior voice, and inventory conversations with ad ops or revenue management about what's available, what's priced right, and what's being undersold. The work is relentlessly forward-looking: next month's close is already in motion while this month is finishing.

Rep coaching is where most managers either build something or stall out. The ones who level up understand that coaching ad sales means teaching reps to read the advertiser's business, not just to overcome objections. You'll sit on calls, review pitches, and have the uncomfortable conversations when someone's activity is fine but their close rate isn't. On a team of six, you're usually running three different development conversations at once.

The hardest part of the role is the pricing and inventory politics — who gets the best placements, how you price make-goods, when you hold rate versus deal to close. Editorial sometimes has opinions. Revenue management has theirs. You're in the middle, trying to hit plan without discounting yourself into a margin problem next quarter.