• by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, October 24, 2016

Take a look at the job listings in trade publications like MediaPost, online job hubs and on company Web sites. There are hundreds of openings for ad tech and martech specialists.

What’s going on?

Are these actual openings or are companies merely testing the waters? The job titles range from manager, digital revenue operations and solutions development manager, to programmatic yield manager and digital ad tech operations specialist. Then there’s data & audience manager and audience buying strategist—those are popular titles, along with audience development manager.

The titles appear to be all over the place, as are the functions.

A manager of digital revenue operations' description, taken from an actual job description, is something like this: “Manage day-to-day inventory of the ad-serving platform (site and mobile), includes order management, fulfillment, and integration with the overall technical platform.”

Many functions require reporting on daily fulfillment and insertion of ad campaigns, a fairly routine duty; creating and designing processes for inventory and yield optimization within ad servers and order management systems (not so clear as to what that is); and support cross-functional team with sales, sales planning and third-party developers.

And here’s a function that’s barely understandable: “Create, maintain and support tools and processes for the Ad Ops team with an emphasis on platform stability, maximum delivery, cost efficiency and business communication” — whatever that means.

The job descriptions for ad tech and mar tech positions are just as incomprehensible as press releases issued by the companies. When will ad tech/martech sectors learn to communicate in English? Maybe never.

The question is: When consolidation comes knocking at ad tech/martech's door, will these jobs disappear or morph into something different?