Associate Media Director

Job Description

Digital creative agency is seeking an Associate Media Director who strategizes, plans, buys and optimizes media, with a focus on luxury clients and the ecommerce space.

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That combination is the whole job, and it's a true two-sided role. You build the plan and defend it to the client, and then you're the one in the platform with your team. Roughly 40% of your week is in-platform execution and analysis. The other 60% is client leadership and reviewing the work around you. You'll move between strategist and operator, often in the same day.

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To be clear about the seat: this role stays hands-on. If your goal is to be fully out of the ad platforms within a year, this isn't the right one. We're looking for a hybrid individual.

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Our accounts sit in luxury, fashion, hospitality, and prestige beauty and skincare, with a strong ecommerce focus, so you'll be weighing brand metrics against direct-response ones on the same account, often in the same conversation. Protecting a premium brand while driving measurable online revenue is the balance you'll be asked to strike every day.

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What you'll do

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• Own accounts end to end. Brief, plan, launch, report.
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• Build and optimize campaigns yourself in Meta and Google Ads, plus a programmatic DSP.
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• Forecast and model plans: channel mix, flighting, budget scenarios.
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• QA your own work, as well as your team's. Naming conventions, UTMs, pixel and CAPI setup, attribution windows.
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• Watch pacing daily and fix things mid-flight without being asked.
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• Present to CMOs, founders, and heads of growth. Explain your reasoning, take the pushback, hold the line when you're right.
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• Review the media work of analysts and associates, and teach them the platform mechanics as you go.
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• Partner with strategy, creative, and PM on specs and launch dates.
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• Help on new business: POVs, RFP responses, pitch forecasts.
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What you bring

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• 8+ years of hands-on paid media buying, ideally agency-side on premium or DTC brands.
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• Direct experience managing beauty and skincare clients.
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• Proven experience driving growth for luxury ecommerce clients, with an understanding of what moves revenue, ROAS, and customer acquisition cost.
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• Real depth in Meta and Google, and working fluency in at least one DSP.
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• You've been the lead individual on accounts.
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• Comfortable in a spreadsheet. Segmenting by audience, placement, and creative, and knowing when a difference is real.
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• The ability to explain auction dynamics and attribution to someone who has never opened an ad platform, without condescending and without hiding behind jargon.
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• Careful work on budgets and reporting.
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• Hospitality or fashion experience is a plus.
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Who thrives here

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• Self-directed operators who set their own optimization cadences, hold themselves to weekly performance review rituals, and ship deliverables without project-managed prompts
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• Practitioners who view in-platform rigor (QA checklists, naming conventions, taxonomy enforcement, post-launch audits) as a senior-level discipline rather than a junior-level checkbox
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• Communicators who write with precision (clear thesis, defensible data, tight prose) and present with confidence under stakeholder scrutiny
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• Teammates who actively document SOPs, share platform release notes, mentor analysts and associates on bidder mechanics, and contribute to internal knowledge bases (Notion, Confluence, Slack channels)
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