Certifications are a signal, not a substitute. No exam captures the instinct built from years of managing ad accounts at scale, navigating platform changes overnight, or optimizing campaigns when the data doesn’t behave the way the textbook says it should. That said, I pursue certifications deliberately – to pressure-test my knowledge, stay current, and, in some cases, because they’re required for the programs I teach.
Google — Search, Ads & Analytics
Google’s certification ecosystem has been one of the most practically relevant in digital marketing for years. My certifications span Search Ads, Google Analytics, and related products. Google is currently migrating its LMS to a new platform, so the full profile view is temporarily limited — but you can find my Skillshop profile linked below.
Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads)
Microsoft Advertising is an underrated channel – particularly for certain demographics and markets where Google’s auction pressure drives up CPCs.
I’ve held Bing Ads certification, though Microsoft is currently updating its certification system and historical records aren’t publicly viewable. The hands-on experience with the platform matters more than the certificate anyway.
Apple Search Ads — Certified
Apple Search Ads isn’t the largest UA channel by volume, but it’s one of the most misunderstood.
It operates on a fundamentally different logic than Google UAC or Meta – intent-driven, privacy-first, and increasingly important in a post-ATT world.
After years of working with Google Search Ads at a high level, earning this certification was a way to formalize expertise in a platform that rewards deep understanding over budget alone.
Certified Digital Marketing Professional (CDMP) — Digital Marketing Institute
The CDMP certification became a requirement for lecturers in the DMI program at the Digital Communications Institute, where I’ve been teaching for over 10 years. Rather than a box-ticking exercise, going through the full certification process – including modules outside my usual teaching areas – was genuinely useful.
It gave me a clearer picture of what my students experience on exam day, and helped me refresh corners of the curriculum I don’t teach myself. If you’re teaching something, you should be able to pass the exam on it.
Cisco CCNA — Where It All Started
This one is old – expired in 2009 – and technically irrelevant to anything I do in digital marketing today. I’m including it anyway, because it shaped how I think. The CCNA taught me to troubleshoot systematically: isolate the variable, test the assumption, don’t fix what you can’t measure. That mindset transferred completely into marketing.
Every campaign audit, every attribution problem, every budget allocation question – I approach it the same way I learned to approach a broken network.