Automation hasn’t eliminated the paid search marketer’s job, it’s redistributed it. A survey of 707 marketers mapped out how an ideal 100 hours a month should be allocated across nine areas, and conversion tracking and data quality claims the largest single share. Campaign management, the area most associated with the manual work automation was supposed to replace, still gets a meaningful allocation, but creative strategy and testing both rank above it.

Essential Statistics

• Conversion tracking and data quality gets the largest allocation at 23 hours out of 100.
• Creative strategy gets 15 hours.
• Landing page and conversion rate optimization gets 14 hours.
• Campaign management gets 13 hours, less than conversion tracking, creative strategy, or landing page work.
• Customer and profitability analysis gets the smallest allocation at 6 hours.

Key Takeaways

• Conversion tracking and data quality receiving the largest time allocation reinforces that marketers see data integrity as the foundation automated systems depend on most.
• Campaign management receiving less time than creative strategy or conversion tracking suggests the role of the paid search marketer is shifting away from hands-on campaign mechanics.
• Testing and experimentation receiving a meaningful 11-hour allocation suggests marketers still see ongoing iteration as essential, even with automation handling execution.
• Customer and profitability analysis receiving the smallest share suggests this remains an underinvested area relative to its potential importance for proving automation’s business impact.
• This allocation suggests the paid search role is becoming less about running campaigns and more about feeding and interpreting the systems that run them.

Actionable Insights

• Audit how your own team’s time is currently split across these nine areas and compare it against this ideal allocation. If campaign management is consuming more than 13% of your team’s time, that’s a signal to shift effort toward conversion tracking or creative work instead.
• Increase time spent on conversion tracking and data quality if it currently gets less attention than campaign management, since this data suggests it should be the single largest area of focus.
• Build a regular creative strategy and testing cadence into your team’s monthly workflow, since these two areas combined account for more hours than campaign management in this ideal split.
• Carve out dedicated time for customer and profitability analysis even though it ranks lowest here, since a small, consistent allocation is still better than none for connecting ad spend to actual business outcomes.
• Use this 100-hour framework as a planning tool when restructuring your paid search team’s responsibilities around automation rather than around legacy campaign management tasks.

‘The paid search job isn’t disappearing. It’s just not about babysitting campaigns anymore. The hours are moving toward data, creative, and testing.’ – Neil Patel