Roles
Media Buyer
The person who runs paid advertising day-to-day — structures campaigns, allocates budget, manages audiences, and ships creative tests. The engineer of your traffic.
A media buyer is the person responsible for the day-to-day execution of paid advertising: structuring campaigns, setting budgets, building audiences, launching creative tests, cutting losers, and scaling winners. They're the engineer of your traffic.
The distinction between a media buyer and a creative strategist:
- Media buyer: Runs the account — campaigns, budgets, audiences, optimization. Thinks in CPMs, CTRs, ROAS, and account structure.
- Creative strategist: Produces what the media buyer runs — hooks, scripts, concepts, angles. Thinks in audience pain points, creative frameworks, and story.
Most $10K-$50K/month stores have the founder doing both. Scaling past $100K/month almost always requires separating them, because the skills and feedback loops are genuinely different.