Senior Paid Media Manager

About the Role

We're looking for a sharp, commercially minded Paid Media Manager to own our paid media activity across the full consumer funnel — from mid-funnel display, paid social and retargeting through to top-of-funnel brand and awareness investment.

This is a hands-on role: you'll build and traffic campaigns yourself, dig deep into the data, and translate what you find into strategic recommendations that shape how we think about media allocation and the consumer journey.

Right now, the primary focus is mid-funnel — driving consideration, engagement and conversion efficiency across paid social, display and retargeting.

But as the business grows its ambition, so does this role.

We are actively planning to scale into larger top-of-funnel investment across multi-channel brand activity — video, audio, connected TV and beyond — and we want someone who can grow into owning that too.

You'll sit at the intersection of executional excellence and analytical rigour — equally comfortable setting up a DV360 campaign or trafficking a DCO creative as you are building a full-funnel investment framework or making the case for a new brand channel test.

Campaign Execution & Trafficking

• Plan, build, traffic and optimise campaigns end-to-end across mid-funnel and top-of-funnel channels including DV360, Meta Ads Manager, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and programmatic DSPs
• Own all tagging, pixel setup, UTM management and campaign QA to ensure data integrity from day one
• Set up and manage dynamic creative (DCO), audience segments and retargeting pools using CDPs, CRMs and clean room data where available
• Manage trafficking workflows with creative teams and ad servers (e.g. Campaign Manager 360), ensuring flawless delivery against go-live dates
• Monitor campaign performance daily, making real-time bid, budget and creative optimisation decisions to hit efficiency and volume targets across the funnel
• As top-of-funnel investment scales, take ownership of brand and awareness campaign delivery across video (YouTube, CTV), audio and high-impact display formats

Analytics & Performance Measurement

• Own the performance reporting framework across mid- and top-of-funnel activity: from dashboard build to weekly stakeholder read-outs
• Apply the right measurement lens by funnel stage — efficiency metrics (CPM, CPC, CPA, ROAS) for mid-funnel; brand and reach metrics (reach, frequency, CPP, brand lift, search uplift) for top-of-funnel
• Design and interpret incrementality tests, A/B experiments and holdout studies to separate true lift from noise — including brand lift studies for awareness campaigns
• Work closely with data and analytics teams on attribution modelling, MMM inputs and audience overlap analysis across the full funnel
• Build financial models and scenario plans to evaluate channel investment decisions and forecast outcomes at both funnel stages

Strategy & Planning

• Lead full-funnel paid media planning — defining how mid-funnel and top-of-funnel channels work together, how audiences flow between stages, and how budgets should be allocated to drive both short-term efficiency and longer-term brand growth
• Build the strategic case for top-of-funnel investment as the business scales: sizing opportunity, modelling expected outcomes and defining the measurement approach before a penny is spent
• Identify emerging platforms, formats and targeting capabilities — from CTV and audio to retail media and creator partnerships — and bring a structured view on where they fit in the funnel mix
• Bring a hypothesis-led approach to campaign planning — defining what you're testing, why, and how you'll know if it worked, whether that's a conversion rate or a brand health metric
• Partner with brand, creative and CRM teams to ensure audience architecture and messaging is coherent across the full consumer journey

Stakeholder & Agency Management

• Act as the day-to-day contact for media agency partners, holding them to high standards on delivery, transparency and insight quality across both performance and brand activity
• Present performance clearly to non-technical stakeholders, translating data into commercial implications and recommendations — including how to frame top-of-funnel investment to a performance-oriented audience
• Collaborate cross-functionally with creative, CRM, product and brand teams to align on campaigns and audience strategy

Who you are

• 3–6 years of hands-on paid media experience, with significant focus on display and/or paid social — you've done the trafficking, not just overseen it
• Proven expertise across key platforms: Meta Ads Manager, DV360, Campaign Manager 360; additional platforms (TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, programmatic DSPs, CTV) a strong plus
• Solid understanding of retargeting mechanics: pixel-based, CRM-matched, contextual and sequential audience strategies
• Some exposure to top-of-funnel or brand campaign planning — even if in a supporting capacity — and genuine curiosity about how brand and performance channels interact
• Experience working with ad servers, tagging solutions (GTM, Floodlight) and brand safety/verification tools (IAS, DoubleVerify)
• A track record of managing meaningful budgets (£500k+ annually) and delivering against performance KPIs, with an understanding of how brand investment creates longer-term returns

Mathematical & Analytical Mindset

• Comfortable with numbers at a level beyond most marketers: you can model a media plan, sense-check a CPM, build a break-even analysis and spot when a stat doesn't add up
• Fluent in Excel or Google Sheets for financial modelling and data manipulation; SQL or Python for data querying is a genuine bonus
• Familiarity with statistical concepts relevant to marketing: confidence intervals, significance testing, regression basics, incrementality
• You naturally ask 'is this causation or correlation?' and know how to design tests that give you an honest answer

Curiosity & Intellectual Drive

• You read ad tech news because you want to, not because you have to. You're across signal loss, privacy changes, cookie deprecation and what they mean for your campaigns
• You ask 'why' before 'what' — curious about consumer behaviour, auction dynamics, creative performance and the mechanics driving results
• You're energised by ambiguity and enjoy figuring things out rather than waiting to be told
• You bring fresh thinking and are comfortable challenging convention when the data supports it

Strategic Capability

• You can think across the full funnel — understanding how awareness activity builds the audiences that mid-funnel campaigns convert, and how to argue for investment at each stage on its own terms
• You can build a compelling narrative around a channel recommendation, grounding it in data, consumer insight and commercial logic — including making the case for top-of-funnel spend to stakeholders who are primarily performance-oriented
• You understand the difference between media efficiency and media effectiveness, and can articulate when each matters and how to measure both
• You're thinking about what this role looks like in two years — and excited by the prospect of owning a larger, more complex multi-channel media remit as the business scales

Tools & Platforms

• DSPs & Social - DV360, Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads, YouTube/Google Ads, Pinterest Ads, The Trade Desk
• Emerging / TOF - Connected TV (e.g. Magnite, FreeWheel), audio (Spotify, DAX), high-impact display
• Ad Servers - Campaign Manager 360, Sizmek
• Measurement - GA4, brand lift tools (Nielsen, Kantar), MMM familiarity, MTA platforms
• Tag Management - Google Tag Manager, Floodlight
• Verification - Integral Ad Science (IAS), DoubleVerify
• Data & Reporting - Looker Studio, Tableau or Power BI; Excel/Sheets advanced
• Bonus - SQL, Python (Pandas), Snowflake or similar data warehouse exposure

In your first 90 days:

• You've audited the existing campaign setup and trafficking processes across mid-funnel channels, and produced a clear view of what's working, what isn't, and your recommended priorities
• You've taken full ownership of at least one live campaign cycle end-to-end, with no dependency on agency or previous team members
• You've established your reporting rhythm and built or improved the core performance dashboard — covering both efficiency and upper-funnel metrics

By six months:

• Mid-funnel efficiency metrics are trending in the right direction, with clear evidence of your optimisation decisions driving improvement
• You've run at least one structured test (audience, creative or channel) and presented findings with a clear recommendation
• You've started to develop a point of view on how top-of-funnel investment should be structured when the budget arrives — and stakeholders are already asking for your input
• Stakeholders trust your numbers, your commercial judgement and your read of what's driving performance across the funnel

Company Benefits

• 10x [Employer hidden] Explorer Passes per year
• Enhanced pension contributions (5% employer)
• Life assurance: 4x your base salary
• Discretionary annual bonus scheme
• Annual leave: 25 days + bank holidays
• Option to rollover or buy additional 5 days annual leave per year
• 1x Community day. Take a day off to give back to the community
• Primary parental leave: 13 weeks 100% + 13 weeks 50%
• Secondary parental leave: 3 weeks 100%
• Work from Anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year
• Health care cash plan
• Personal Learning budget via Happl & dedicated time for development
• EAP providing access to counselling, finance support, etc.
• Cycle to Work Scheme