Human translator: expertise and uncertainty in the age of automated digital advertising

Abstract

This article analyzes the fundamental transformation of the work of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) specialists in the context of increasing automation and algorithmic opacity (the so-called black box) in digital advertising. As systems such as Google Ads and Meta Ads take over campaign optimization and budget allocation decisions, the role of the human expert is undergoing a profound redefinition. Based on a qualitative ethnographic study (including 27 in-depth interviews with PPC specialists and a netnographic analysis of discussions on industry forums), the article explores how practitioners negotiate responsibility and expertise in conditions of systemic uncertainty. The results indicate that the work of PPC specialists is evolving from a purely technical one to an interpretive and epistemic practice. Specialists increasingly function as interpreters of algorithmic decisions, explaining their results to clients and managers, striving to maintain the appearance of control over systems whose internal logic remains hidden. Tacit knowledge, based on intuition, emotional experience, and the collective production of meaning within communities of practitioners (e.g., on forums), proves to be key to their functioning. The article introduces and develops the concept of algorithmic accountability as an epistemic practice – the daily effort to make sense of, justify, and explain automated decisions in the face of structural ignorance. The study contributes to critical studies of algorithms by presenting PPC as a microcosm of the data economy, in which humans do not disappear but become indispensable interpreters, acting as guarantors of meaning in hybrid human-machine systems.