Associate Media Director

Confidential Careers · New york, United States

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.

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.

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.

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.

What you'll do

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

What you bring

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

Who thrives here

• Self-directed operators who set their own optimization cadences, hold themselves to weekly performance review rituals, and ship deliverables without project-managed prompts
• 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
• Communicators who write with precision (clear thesis, defensible data, tight prose) and present with confidence under stakeholder scrutiny
• 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)