Paid Media Specialist

Paid Media Specialist

New York, NY

About the Role

The Paid Media Specialist will own Bubble's paid media strategy and execution across retail and DTC channels, ensuring every media dollar drives measurable sales impact. Retail media is the engine of this role - spanning Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Ulta UB Media, Criteo, and Amazon Ads - and the right candidate will bring hands-on experience activating and optimizing across media networks.

This role marks Bubble's transition to an in-house paid media model - a deliberate move to bring strategy, execution, and accountability closer to the business.

This is a largely autonomous role. You'll operate without an external paid media agency (aside from our Amazon partner), managing strategy, execution, and reporting directly. You'll act as the connective tissue between Bubble's ecommerce, retail, and marketing teams - ensuring paid media is aligned to channel priorities, commercially grounded, and continuously optimized for growth.

Key Responsibilities

Retail Media Networks

• Lead strategy and execution across Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Ulta UB Media, Criteo, and other RMNs - managing two distinct but connected workstreams: tent-pole campaign activations and always-on display and search.
• Own the day-to-day management of retail.com display and sponsored search activity, including keyword bidding, bid optimization, audience targeting, and spend pacing. This is an active, hands-on workstream requiring regular monitoring and continuous efficiency improvements.
• Lead the planning and execution of larger, campaign-led retail media moments tied to product launches, promotional windows, and retailer joint business plans. Partner with retail account leads to ensure media activity is aligned to sell-in priorities and commercial objectives.
• Act as Bubble's lead point of contact with retailer media teams (including Roundel, UB Media, Walmart Connect), co-developing briefs, aligning on campaign priorities, and ensuring executional follow-through against agreed plans.
• Proactively identify and recommend budget reallocation opportunities across RMNs - flagging where spend is over or underindexed relative to performance, and shifting investment toward the highest-efficiency channels and placements.
• Own RMN performance reporting - tracking spend, ROAS, and retail.com sales lift with clear visibility for internal stakeholders.

Amazon Ads

• Oversee and direct Bubble's Amazon Ads strategy in close partnership with our external Amazon agency - shaping campaign priorities, holding the agency accountable to performance, and ensuring Amazon activity is integrated with broader retail media goals.
• Serve as the internal expert and day-to-day point of contact on Amazon performance, translating agency outputs into actionable insights for the wider team.

DTC Paid Media

• Manage Bubble's paid media mix for hellobubble.com across Meta, TikTok, Google Search, and YouTube - covering both prospecting and retargeting.
• Build and optimize campaigns that balance customer acquisition efficiency (ROAS, CAC) with brand awareness.
• Partner with the creative team to brief platform-specific content and run ongoing creative testing.
• Stay current on emerging ad formats and proactively test new opportunities.

Email & CRM Collaboration

• Partner with the Senior Director of Ecommerce on email and SMS strategy - sharing paid media insights to inform segmentation, offers, and creative testing.
• Ensure messaging consistency across paid and owned channels, particularly around launches and promotions.

Reporting, KPIs & Performance Accountability

• Build and own Bubble's paid media reporting framework from the ground up - designing dashboards, cadences, and templates that give clear, consistent visibility across all channels.
• Collaborate with digital, commercial leadership, and marketing to define KPIs that are meaningful, commercially grounded, and aligned to business priorities - then hold yourself accountable to them.
• Core metrics will span: ROAS, CAC, retail.com sales lift, share of voice, attributed revenue, spend efficiency, and channel-level contribution - with the expectation that this candidate can contextualize performance, not just report it.
• Deliver regular performance reviews to senior stakeholders, translating data into clear narratives and actionable recommendations.
• Drive a test-and-learn culture - documenting what's working, what isn't, and what's next, with structured frameworks for ongoing optimization.
• Align paid and organic search performance with the Senior Director of Ecommerce, using paid search insights to inform broader SEO strategy.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with retail account leads, retail marketing, ecommerce, and finance to ensure paid media is aligned to commercial priorities and budgets are deployed effectively.
• Partner with finance on spend forecasting and budget tracking.

What We're Looking For

• 4+ years in growth marketing, paid media, or performance marketing - brand or agency side.
• Proven, hands-on experience across retail media networks (Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Ulta, Criteo, Sephora, etc) - this is non-negotiable.
• Solid working knowledge of DTC paid channels: search, social, and retargeting.
• Demonstrated ability to build reporting infrastructure independently - you've owned a performance framework, not just contributed to one.
• Comfortable operating autonomously - you can own a channel end-to-end without being managed to it.
• Strong analytical instincts - you turn data into clear recommendations, not just reports.
• Collaborative by nature, but capable of driving independently in a fast-moving, lean environment.