Ad Course

Lesson 1 • Core Advertising Formats

Surveys display, video, search, social, audio, and out-of-home formats. Provides format literacy needed before channel strategy is taught.

Lesson 2 • Industry Roles and Stakeholders

Maps advertisers, agencies, publishers, and platforms. Clarifies who makes decisions and who executes them in a campaign.

Lesson 3 • Regulatory and Ethical Basics

Introduces truthfulness standards, disclosure requirements, and consumer protection principles. Sets ethical guardrails applied throughout the course.

Lesson 4 • What Advertising Does

Defines advertising's economic and psychological roles in markets. Anchors all subsequent channel and strategy decisions to this purpose.

Lesson 1 • Understanding Your Target Audience

Covers demographic, psychographic, and behavioural audience dimensions. Grounds targeting decisions in real consumer insight rather than assumptions.

Lesson 2 • First-, Second-, and Third-Party Data

Distinguishes data ownership tiers and their reliability, cost, and scale. Prepares students to build data strategies that reduce third-party dependency.

Lesson 3 • Primary and Secondary Research Methods

Teaches surveys, interviews, focus groups, and syndicated data sources. Equips students to gather and validate audience intelligence before campaign launch.

Lesson 4 • Digital Targeting Techniques

Explains contextual, keyword, interest, and behavioural targeting options. Connects audience profiles to platform-level targeting controls.

Lesson 1 • Channel Mix and Media Planning

Guides selection of channels based on audience, objective, and budget fit. Produces an integrated channel plan that avoids duplication and gaps.

Lesson 2 • Setting Campaign Objectives

Translates business goals into measurable advertising objectives using established frameworks. Ensures every downstream decision ties back to a defined outcome.

Lesson 3 • Budget Allocation Principles

Covers budgeting methods, channel weighting, and contingency planning. Teaches students to defend budget decisions with data and strategic rationale.

Lesson 4 • Campaign Timeline and Workflow

Maps production, trafficking, and launch milestones to a realistic timeline. Prevents delays by identifying dependencies and approval bottlenecks early.

Lesson 1 • Format-Specific Creative Execution

Adapts creative principles to display, video, search, and social formats. Prevents common format-specific mistakes that reduce ad performance.

Lesson 2 • Copywriting for Ads

Covers headline, body copy, and call-to-action writing across formats. Develops concise, benefit-led language that drives clicks and conversions.

Lesson 3 • Persuasion Principles in Advertising

Applies psychological persuasion models to ad creative decisions. Grounds creative choices in proven influence mechanisms rather than aesthetic preference.

Lesson 4 • Creative Testing and Iteration

Introduces A/B and multivariate testing frameworks for creative assets. Builds a systematic improvement cycle tied to performance data.

Lesson 1 • Programmatic Buying Fundamentals

Defines real-time bidding, private marketplaces, and programmatic direct. Establishes the vocabulary and mechanics needed for hands-on platform work.

Lesson 2 • Audience Data Activation

Connects first- and third-party audience segments to DSP targeting. Operationalises the audience strategy built in earlier chapters.

Lesson 3 • Demand-Side Platform Operations

Covers campaign setup, targeting configuration, and bid strategy within a DSP. Translates strategic plans into executable platform settings.

Lesson 4 • Ad Verification and Brand Safety

Addresses viewability, invalid traffic, and contextual safety tools. Protects campaign investment from fraud and reputational risk.

Lesson 1 • Paid Social Campaign Setup

Guides objective selection, audience targeting, and ad format choices on social platforms. Applies creative principles to social-specific placements.

Lesson 2 • Paid Search Campaign Structure

Explains account, campaign, ad group, and keyword hierarchy. Proper structure prevents budget waste and enables precise performance control.

Lesson 3 • Social Ad Creative and Copy

Adapts copywriting and visual principles to feed, story, and video social formats. Addresses platform-specific creative policies and best practices.

Lesson 4 • Search and Social Optimisation

Teaches ongoing optimisation routines for both channels using platform analytics. Builds a repeatable performance improvement process.

Lesson 1 • Attribution Models and Logic

Compares last-click, linear, time-decay, and data-driven attribution models. Teaches students to choose models that reflect true campaign contribution.

Lesson 2 • Tracking and Tag Implementation

Covers pixel, tag, and conversion event setup across platforms. Ensures accurate data collection that underpins all performance analysis.

Lesson 3 • Reporting and Insight Communication

Structures performance reports that drive decisions rather than just display data. Connects analytics outputs to strategic recommendations for stakeholders.

Lesson 4 • Measurement Planning

Builds a measurement plan aligned to campaign objectives and KPIs. Prevents post-campaign confusion by defining success criteria before launch.

Lesson 1 • Strategic Presentation and Stakeholder Buy-In

Packages campaign strategy and results into compelling executive presentations. Develops the communication skills needed to defend and evolve ad strategy.

Lesson 2 • Testing and Experimentation at Scale

Builds a structured experimentation roadmap for ongoing campaign improvement. Moves from ad hoc testing to a systematic learning agenda.

Lesson 3 • Full-Funnel Campaign Architecture

Designs campaigns that address awareness, consideration, and conversion simultaneously. Prevents siloed channel thinking by connecting funnel stages explicitly.

Lesson 4 • Cross-Channel Optimisation

Applies unified performance data to reallocate budget and effort across channels. Builds the analytical habit of treating channels as a portfolio, not silos.