Director of Paid Media

Location: Cape Town

Working as part of the Acquisition Planning and Media team, the Director of Paid Media will lead our clients paid media strategy across the full customer journey from awareness and consideration through to conversion and retention.

This role is responsible for building and executing a full-funnel media strategy that drives efficient growth. You’ll lead a team across 360 paid media channels and ad operations, ensuring campaigns are strategically planned, technically sound, well optimised and clearly measured.

You’ll combine strong technical expertise across media platforms with strategic thinking, commercial awareness and the ability to identify new opportunities to reach customers.

Reporting to the Snr Dr of Acquisition, the role will support Acquisition Planning Managers to develop media strategies and plans for their portfolio of clients.

Responsibilities

Full Funnel Media Strategy

• Define and lead the paid media strategy across the full funnel: awareness, consideration and conversion.
• Ensure effective distribution of media investment across brand building and performance channels.
• Develop integrated media plans that drive both reach and measurable customer acquisition.
• Continuously optimise channel mix and budget allocation to maximise return on media investment.
• Ensure best practice across campaign planning, targeting, creative testing and optimisation.
• Develop scalable influencer strategies that support both brand awareness and conversion.

Campaign Performance & Optimisation

• Oversee the planning, implementation and optimisation of campaigns across all channels.
• Establish clear campaign objectives, KPIs and testing frameworks.
• Drive continuous optimisation of audience targeting, creative, bidding and media investment.

Ad Tech, Tracking & Attribution

• In conjunction with key cross-functional stakeholders and working with the Acquisition Capability Lead, define the requirements for marketing technology to maximize marketing performance and profitably.
• Ensure robust tracking and measurement across all paid media activity.
• Oversee implementation and optimisation of ad tech platforms, tagging and attribution frameworks.
• Work with analytics teams to ensure reliable performance measurement and reporting.

Data, Insights & Reporting

• Partner with analytics and insight teams to measure media effectiveness.
• Translate performance data into actionable insights and strategic recommendations.
• Ensure media performance is clearly reported to senior stakeholders.

Team Leadership

• Lead and develop the performance marketing team across paid media, ad operations and analytics.
• Set strategic direction and priorities for the team.
• Foster a culture of experimentation, innovation and continuous optimisation.

Market & Competitor Insight

• Maintain strong understanding of the competitive landscape and media investment trends.
• Identify opportunities to reach new audiences or leverage emerging platforms.
• Stay ahead of industry developments and best practice in performance marketing.

CRM & Channel Integration

• Work closely with CRM and lifecycle marketing teams to ensure media supports customer retention and engagement strategies.
• Identify opportunities to use paid media channels to support CRM initiatives such as retargeting, audience activation and lifecycle campaigns.

Agency & Vendor Management

• Manage relationships with media agencies, influencer agencies and technology partners.
• Ensure agencies deliver strategic value, strong execution and measurable performance.
• Lead commercial negotiations and performance management with external partners.

Budget Management

• Manage significant paid media budgets.
• Provide weekly/monthly/quarterly/annual forecasts for all channels, brands and regions.
• Ensure effective allocation of spend across channels and campaigns.
• Monitor performance and return on investment across media activity.

Skills & Experience

• Extensive experience leading paid media and performance marketing strategies.
• Strong knowledge of full funnel marketing and customer acquisition strategies.
• Deep expertise across search, social, programmatic, display and retargeting channels.
• Experience managing influencer and creator marketing strategies.
• Strong understanding of marketing technology, tracking and attribution.
• Experience leading high performing marketing teams.
• Proven ability to use data and insights to drive optimisation and growth.
• Strong commercial mindset with experience managing agency and vendor relationships.

Leadership Expectations

• Strategic thinker with strong commercial awareness.
• Highly collaborative and able to work across multiple marketing functions.
• Data-driven decision maker with strong analytical capability.
• Strong communicator able to influence senior stakeholders.
• Proactive and innovative, constantly identifying new opportunities to improve performance.

If you are an experienced director of Paid Media and looking for an exciting new challenge I would be more than happy to have a informal chat before progressing any application.