Digital Ad Operations Manager: Rainmaker

Role Purpose

The Senior Manager of Digital Ad Operations is instrumental in the strategic advancement and facilitation of our precision marketing offerings within the organization.

This position oversees the advertising operations team, managing the scheduling, implementation, and optimization of all advertising campaigns to guarantee precise and timely execution across all digital platforms.

The role involves trafficking and managing these campaigns by collaborating with sales teams, advertisers, technology departments, and clients to ensure the seamless execution of each campaign, while consistently producing ad server reports that convey the campaign's status and directly guide the team's subsequent actions. This position supervises a team of specialists in advertising platforms and traffic operations, ensuring a smooth and efficient workflow between the ad operations team and the broader organization.

Role Description

• Directs and ensures the efficient execution of daily operations within the ad operations department.
• Acts as the primary liaison between the advertising operations department and the account management team.
• Champions innovation within the team, facilitating ongoing enhancements in performance that lead to the continuous achievement of sales and overall business objectives.
• Implements advanced tools and processes tailored to the business needs to accomplish its digital channel goals.
• Provides insights and knowledge on the latest trends in digital marketing strategies, ad-serving techniques, new technologies, and current systems.
• Leverages data from existing campaigns to shape strategies for upcoming initiatives, while factoring in performance metrics, behavioral and transactional targeting to enhance ROAS for our clients.
• Collaborates with the sales, content, and strategy teams to define the planning, inventory management, prioritization, testing, scheduling, and delivery of advertising initiatives and campaigns.
• Oversees campaign delivery to confirm that campaigns are performing as intended and offers troubleshooting support for traffic challenges.
• Analyzes data, generates insights, formulates recommendations, and executes periodic optimizations that lead to increased sales, enhanced campaign performance, and the attainment of the company's overall objectives.
• Reviews dashboards and campaign performance metrics to provide informed, data-driven solutions that effectively improve client campaign outcomes.
• Establishes processes and protocols for pre-launch preparations, including conducting quality assurance on ad tags and creative assets.
• Identifies, establishes, and applies the company’s best practices for advertising campaign setup, optimization, measurement, and reporting.
• Troubleshoots tracking issues, devises solutions, and documents internal procedures for the campaign management team to follow in their departmental duties.

Qualifications and Experience

• Degree or Diploma in Marketing, Advertising, Media, Sales, or a related field.
• Over 7 years of experience in a comparable position within a retailer, brand, or agency, with a comprehensive understanding of ad-serving capabilities, measurement, app implementation, creative processes, dynamic ads, campaign management, and digital media planning and buying – essential.
• Strong familiarity with current digital media platforms and solutions to determine the scope for advertising campaigns – essential.
• Significant experience leading a team through the lifecycle of an advertising campaign from conception to the realization of its objectives – essential.
• Robust knowledge of analytical methodologies and tactics for optimizing data-driven marketing campaigns (such as segmentation, predictive response models, etc.) - desired.
• Experience resolving ad serving technical issues, including delivery investigations and third-party media complications, along with the identification of various tag types, e.g., HTML and JavaScript, and associated potential issues - desired.
• Strong commercial insight with a proven understanding of the media landscape and various online advertising pricing structures (CPC, CPM, CPA, etc.) - essential.
• Thorough knowledge of Marketing principles, audience targeting, data collection, and programmatic approaches – essential.
• Understanding of Ad Tech products, data vendors, industry standards, third-party technology, and market trends - essential.
• Proficient in MS Office – essential.

Key Competencies and Work Ethic

• Strategic and conceptual thinking – Comprehends various facets of retail while adopting a macro perspective to develop and design paid media strategies and concepts. Utilizes strategic thinking to formulate joint business plans, influence stakeholders, and address customer challenges in a dynamic shopping environment.
• Analytical and data-driven with strong problem-solving abilities - Organizes and assesses data to identify/explain trends or issues and their origins. Develops practicable solutions to achieve long-term goals and creates decision criteria considering relevant aspects (cost, benefits, risks, timing, buy-in, business goals, customers, employees).
• Commercial awareness – Possesses a solid understanding of commercial mechanics and strategies to enhance value and leverage business insights and analytics to discover and capitalize on incremental business opportunities.
• Project management - Manages multiple projects and competing deliverables concurrently in a fast-paced, evolving environment.
• Flexible and agile – Adjusts and responds positively to changing conditions; identifies opportunities and risks and acts to achieve optimal outcomes. Displays curiosity and an inherent desire to learn, inquire, and comprehend underlying reasons.
• Resilient - Capable of thriving in a fast-paced environment, managing ambiguity, and adapting to the evolving business landscape. Able to organize, prioritize, and adjust workload in a rapidly changing and dynamic context.
• Planning and organizing – Exhibits strong organizational planning, deadline management, and attention to detail. Focuses on execution, quality, and process improvement.
• Excellent communication skills - Employs a range of influencing and negotiation tactics to address and facilitate challenges both internally and externally. Simplifies complex concepts into clear, articulate communications and delivers compelling presentations. Strong skills in agency management and vendor relationships.
• Self-motivated and driven with high integrity - Takes ownership of actions and accountability for mistakes.
• Collaborative partnering – Fosters relationships both internally and externally. Communicates openly, honestly, and directly, and is comfortable providing and receiving constructive feedback. Thinks and acts independently as well as cooperatively.
• Innovative and solution-oriented – Thinks creatively. Exhibits sound judgment, rapid decision-making capability, and generates both short- and long-term solutions that facilitate workflow and meet deadlines. Approaches challenges with a “test and learn” mindset to identify and unlock commercial opportunities.
• Complex decision-making - Comfortable making decisions and executing tasks in a fast-paced environment, results-oriented, and capable of absorbing intricate concepts and articulating them clearly.
• Team player & self-starter – Comfortable working in a collaborative setting, with the ability to work independently with minimal supervision.
• Exceptional leadership skills – Capable of inspiring and guiding a team towards a unified direction with a shared vision.