Head of Creative Branding and Digital in London

Footballco is the world's leading football media company, built for the next generation of fans. Our mission is to give fans more of the game by building football communities that entertain, inform, and inspire action. We cover everything in football from news and analysis, original reporting, and social media content, to web stores, video, podcasts, newsletters, and live scores. With over 1 billion video views per month, 100 million social followers globally, and a reach of 800 million across web, social, and video platforms, Footballco is the world’s largest football media company and one of the largest digital media companies in sport globally.

The Head of Programmatic is responsible for driving the growth and diversification of Footballco’s indirect revenue business by developing and implementing monetization strategies across programmatic advertising, social platform monetization, and content distribution revenue streams with the opportunity to develop new channels. This is a unique opportunity to lead revenue maximization strategies across FootballCo’s global portfolio of digital properties, social channels, video platforms, and partner distribution ecosystems.

This role will oversee the analysis of revenue opportunities and the development of monetization optimization methods and tools across display, mobile, video, social and distributed content products. The Head of Programmatic will identify new commercial opportunities, optimize existing revenue channels, and lead long-term monetization strategy across multiple platforms and partners supported by a team of other monetization specialists.

In this role, you will size revenue opportunities, build models, assist with implementation, analyze results, and strategize long-term outcomes. This position requires strong cross-functional collaboration with AdOps, Sales, Editorial, Product, Audience Development, Data and Finance teams to create a holistic monetization strategy across all platforms and revenue streams. You will be a highly motivated, commercially focused individual who is engaged at all levels of planning, execution and analysis, with the ability to navigate and explain the complex and rapidly evolving monetization, ad technology, creator economy and digital distribution landscape.

This position is a critical mix of technical expertise, commercial strategy, operational leadership and analytical capability. As a key leader in the Revenue Operations team, this individual will directly impact Footballco’s global revenue growth and indirect monetization diversification strategy.

What you'll be doing:

• Own and innovate Footballco’s overall monetization strategy across programmatic, social monetization, content distribution revenue streams, etc.
• Oversee programmatic yield management including floors, pricing strategies, partner prioritization and auction optimization to maximize overall revenue.
• Develop and evolve monetization strategies across YouTube, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and emerging social/video platforms.
• Identify and grow new monetization opportunities through content syndication, licensing, distribution partnerships and platform revenue share programs.
• Own relationships with monetization, platform and demand partners, ensuring strong commercial performance and ongoing innovation.
• Manage, evaluate and analyze monetization performance regularly across all revenue streams, ad stacks and platform ecosystems.
• Create analysis, reporting and forecasting models to support monetization and commercial decision-making.
• Run regular A/B and monetization optimization tests to improve revenue performance and user experience.
• Make business recommendations based on monetization and audience data analysis and communicate findings to senior management.
• Work closely with internal teams including Sales, Revenue Operations, Product, Editorial, Audience and Social teams to guide monetization decisions through data-driven insights.
• Contribute to business modelling, forecasting and strategic planning initiatives across revenue operations.
• Work with internal and external partners to ensure access to the right tools, technology, features and reporting capabilities to support business growth.
• Define, measure and evolve KPIs for the monetization function while continuously challenging legacy processes and solutions.
• Provide analytical and technical leadership when evaluating new demand partners, monetization technologies and platform opportunities.
• Stay informed on industry trends, platform changes, creator monetization models and evolving ad technology to ensure Footballco remains competitive and innovative.

What you have:

• Minimum 5+ years’ experience in monetization, yield management, programmatic advertising or digital revenue operations.
• Proven experience managing programmatic ad stacks and monetization ecosystems.
• Strong understanding of social platform monetization including YouTube, Meta, TikTok and creator monetization models.
• Experience working with content distribution, licensing or syndication revenue models is highly desirable.
• Established experience with GAM, SSPs, DSPs and major programmatic platforms.
• Strong experience with header bidding implementation, optimization and maintenance.
• Familiarity with monetization and yield reporting platforms (DataStudio, Datarama, Looker, Tableau etc.).
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills with the ability to work cross-functionally.
• Strong commercial mindset with the ability to balance revenue growth and user experience.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Ability to interpret large datasets, identify trends and uncover actionable insights.
• Experience troubleshooting ad technology and platform integrations across multiple systems.
• Exceptional attention to detail and ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
• Experience managing or mentoring team members is desirable.
• Familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and JQuery is a plus.
• Passion for digital media, sports publishing and emerging monetization trends is highly desirable.

Footballco is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, colour, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category.