Associate Director, Ad Ops, EMEA

EssenceMediacom is GroupM’s newest and largest agency, committed to delivering marketing breakthroughs for brands. It has disrupted the old models across media, creative, innovation and analytics to find new opportunities for advertisers and deliver truly integrated media solutions.

Born out of two pioneering agencies, EssenceMediacom fuses Essence’s performance, data, analytics, and creative technology DNA with MediaCom’s scaled multichannel audience planning and strategic media expertise.

As part of WPP, the world's largest marketing communications services group, and GroupM, WPP’s consolidated media investment management arm, we have access to the richest data, most robust benchmarks, and most advanced capabilities in the market. This helps us provide comprehensive solutions to all marketing challenges.

Our ‘breakthrough’ ambition is underpinned by our commitment to ‘continuous learning.’ We aim to ensure our people fulfil their potential by investing in their whole-person wellbeing, careers, and capabilities, which in turn helps grow our clients’ businesses.

EssenceMediacom, with 10,000 people across 120 offices in 96 markets, is one of the world’s leading communications specialists, with billings of more than US$21 billion (Source: COMvergence, 2021). Its global client roster includes adidas, Coca-Cola (TCCC), Dell, Google, Hasbro, Mars, NBC Universal, P&G, Richemont, Shell, Sony, and Uber.

Find out more at www.essencemediacom.com. Alternatively, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Reports to: Ad Ops Director

The role

EssenceMediacom is seeking a smart, enthusiastic individual to become an integral part of our Advertising Operations team. Our team is responsible for ad serving, asset management, web analytics, and other optimization technologies associated with the execution of digital advertising – and for ensuring digital campaigns are launched on time and run accurately. We provide consultancy to our clients and colleagues and are at the centre of all things tech within the agency. Our team is structured to provide a tailored approach that is both flexible and adaptable to align to our client’s needs.

The right candidate will have a number of years’ experience managing and developing a team, experience working in the trenches of ad operations within an advertising agency, a good understanding of the digital landscape and most importantly an appetite to continually improve team workflow and process to ensure we continue to deliver best-in-class ad operations. You will have expert knowledge of ad serving systems and a passion for new and emerging technologies.

Accountabilities include:

• People Management & Development
  • Day to day management and development of team members, including supporting their successful induction onto the team, delivery of training, and advising on career development.
  • Serve as a model leader to team members, motivating and inspiring the team to strive for excellence, building relationships, and working towards continuous team improvement.
  • Support the recruitment of ad operations resources.
• Campaign Management
  • Manage the Ad Ops Team’s delivery, through campaign trafficking, QA and troubleshooting.
  • Lead client site tag management; both implementation and consultation.
  • Maintain a high-quality standard for the department by driving best practices to ensure 100% accuracy and to exceed client expectations.
  • Monitor measurement data to ensure campaigns are running as expected, providing optimization recommendations and escalating to third parties when appropriate.
  • Project manage stakeholder processes, coordinating timelines and leading communications with our agency partners.
  • Act as a strategic partner; internally and externally; providing consultation on the correct setup of campaigns, client site tagging, and the use of ad technologies.
• Thought Leadership & Consultation
  • Develop, lead, and project manage department initiatives.
  • Assess the ad tech landscape and lead in testing of different ad tech products.
  • Support/lead client initiatives; drive thought leadership and author POVs for operational, technical, creative, and measurement solutions.
• Process & Efficiency
  • Development and roll-out of new processes across respective client(s).
  • Lead the team to continually identify and implement opportunities for improvement within processes and supporting systems.
  • Collaborate with discipline leads to develop new ways of working to increase cross team efficiencies.
  • Support in leading inter-departmental communication regarding department updates, new processes, and the testing of new technology or platforms.
  • Act as an ambassador of ad operations across the agency. Work with leads on other teams to raise visibility, train new starters on process, and continually educate teams on recent developments, building advocacy across the agency.
  • Support the onboarding of new clients, setting up the agency and teams for success.

A bit about your skills and experience:

• Significant experience in ad operations, preferably agency-side working on large and complex client accounts.
• Experience managing a team.
• Basic knowledge of web technologies including HTML, JavaScript or PHP.
• Hands-on knowledge of ad serving systems and advertising tracking technologies.
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills
• A strong understanding of industry trends and ad tech developments.
• A strong work ethic; able to work under pressure, meet deadlines and deliver results
• Well-developed organizational and project management skills
• Fine-tuned communication and presentation skills

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