SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF PAID MEDIA

Reports To: Managing Director, Performance

Direct Reports: Associate Directors across Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative

Scope: $15M P&L across three pillars: Paid Media (all paid channels), Programmatic, Creative

Location: Remote (U.S.) with travel to client and company events

Classification: Full-Time, Exempt, Senior Leadership

Overview

The SVP, Paid Media owns a $15M P&L spanning three pillars: Paid Media (all paid channels as one), Programmatic, and Creative. The role reports to the Managing Director, Performance, and is accountable for commercial outcomes, client retention, and the quality of work produced across all three pillars.

The SVP leads through Associate Directors who manage billable consultants executing the day-to-day. The SVP does not run campaigns. The SVP is a leader of leaders, a senior inspector of work at the moments that matter most to clients, and a coach to middle managers who are learning how to inspect work themselves.

The fundamental model of this role is a dual posture: personal inspection at the decisive moments in a client engagement, and operational leverage through Associate Directors the rest of the time. The SVP who gets this right is visible at the moments that determine retention and absent at the operational ones. The SVP who gets it wrong is either a bottleneck or invisible.

The Job

Inspect Work at the Moments That Matter

The SVP is personally present at the moments in a client engagement where the quality of the work determines the trajectory of the relationship. The SVP reads the strategy, stress-tests the creative brief, and pressure-checks the programmatic plan before it reaches the client. The SVP accountability at each moment in the client lifecycle is outlined below:

– Sales-to-Ops Handoff: Personally review the handoff brief for any new client exceeding the SVP inspection threshold. Ensure the delivery team starts with a complete picture of the client’s business and commercial objectives.

– Kickoff Call: Attend or review the kickoff for priority clients. Ensure scope, success metrics, and NSM alignment are calibrated before the relationship starts.

– Project Phase: Inspect initial strategy and planning artifacts across Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative before first delivery. The right push at this moment sets the tone for the entire engagement.

– NSM Setting: Personally validate the North Star Metric for every engagement above threshold. If NSM is wrong, nothing downstream matters.

– Weekly Updates: Spot-check weekly updates on priority clients. Coach AsDs on what good communication looks like. Do not inspect every update — inspect the pattern.

– Monthly Updates: Review monthly operational output on priority clients for substance, clarity, and connection to the client’s business outcomes.

– QBRs: Personally pressure-test QBR decks before they go to the client. Attend QBRs for priority or at-risk accounts. This is the senior client moment — senior eyes must be on it.

– 6-Mo. Strategy Review: Inspect strategy recalibration work. Ensure the team is evolving the strategy based on real data, not inertia.

– ABR: Personally lead or co-lead ABRs for top accounts. The case for renewal and expansion is made here — the SVP is present.

– Renewal: Own the renewal conversation for priority accounts. Ensure commercial terms and relationship health are set up for 12-month lock-in.

The SVP defines “good” for each moment and each pillar — what a great paid media strategy looks like, what a great creative brief looks like, what a great programmatic plan looks like — and holds Strategists and AsDs accountable to that standard.

Find Leverage Through Associate Directors

Between the moments that matter, the SVP leads through their Associate Directors. The goal is to develop AsDs into real inspectors of work — not just project managers who run status meetings.

1. Run a consistent operating cadence with each AsD: what gets reviewed, how often, and what escalates versus what the AsD owns.

2. Coach AsDs on how to see work critically. Teach them what to look for, how to give feedback, and how to raise the floor on their Strategists and consultants.

3. Inspect how AsDs inspect. Attend their reviews occasionally. Read feedback they give their teams. Calibrate the standards across the organization.

4. Hold AsDs accountable for team quality and client health, not just delivery throughput.

Lead Across Paid Media, Programmatic & Creative

The SVP develops credibility and holds quality standards across three distinct pillars without being the deepest expert in any of them.

1. Maintain working fluency in Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative sufficient to inspect work credibly and push back with substance.

2. Identify and operationalize integration points across the three pillars. Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative should function as a single capability, not three parallel teams.

3. Hold discipline