Affiliate Manager in London

Reporting To: Affiliate Director

Office Location: Havas Village London, Pancras Square, N1C 4AG

About Us – Havas Media Network

Havas Media Network (HMN) employs over 1,000 people in the UK & Ireland. We work with clients to generate meaningful outcomes and are extremely proud of our proven track record for accelerating business growth and creating a meaningful difference. HMN spans London, Leeds, Manchester, and Edinburgh, servicing clients through our agency brands including Havas Media, Arena Media, Ledger Bennett, and Havas Market. Across all agency brands, we have defined shared values that shape the way we work and define what we expect from our people.

• Human at Heart: You will respect, empower, and support others, fostering an inclusive workplace and creating meaningful experiences.
• Head for Rigour: You will take pride in delivering high-quality, outcome-focused work and continually strive for improvement.
• Mind for Flair: You will embrace diversity and bold thinking to craft brilliant, unique solutions.

Our Digital Activation Team

All agency brands under HMN are serviced by a centralised digital activation function - a scaled team of 200+ specialists spanning affiliates, paid performance, SEO, paid social, programmatic and commerce in the UK. This new Affiliate Manager role sits within the paid performance team, but this will see you working across Havas Media and Havas Market clients.

The Role

As an Affiliate Manager, you will be a performance specialist with affiliate experience and client facing skills. You will work on a portfolio of clients, including globally recognised brands across retail and automotive verticals. The principal elements of the role will be to manage an Affiliate Executive in the pursuit of performance excellence. You will be responsible for campaign implementation, analysis, optimisation, delivery and evaluation across affiliate, but as part of a paid performance function. Working alongside the Affiliate Director where relevant, you will also have a chance to heavily influence strategy and lead on the implementation of innovative, new solutions for your client. It is essential you have a strong retail background and are able to deliver effectively on scaled, international business.

There will be a heavy client facing element to this role, as you’ll be required to lead weekly calls/meetings and lead on or parts of larger monthly and quarterly meetings, with the support of your line manager. As such, it’s essential you feel comfortable with clients, have strong communication skills, as well as a proactive attitude and a real hunger for success.

Key Responsibilities

• Creation and management of affiliate campaigns to effectively deliver client objectives and targets.
• Strong relationship with different Affiliate Networks.
• Technical lead and point of authority - able to quickly extract information and train junior members.
• Put forward recommendations and forecasts outside of CPA/CPL and showcase to the client how this activity contributes to their KPIs.
• Able to work with other digital teams and feel comfortable discussing how affiliates and lead generation fits into the overall marketing mix.
• Leading client calls in a confident and effective manner to ensure our clients understand our value, trust in our capability, and understand the opportunity within the Affiliate channel.
• Optimising existing publisher relationships and recruiting new and exciting publisher opportunities.
• Monitor performance daily/weekly: track revenue, orders, ROAS, and risk signals etc.
• Identify top performers and scale them (higher commissions, exclusive promos, priority creative etc.).
• Spot and remove underperformers or low-quality affiliates quickly - cut them if they hurt brand perception, drive refunds/chargebacks, or deliver poor LTV traffic.
• Enforce brand guidelines and compliance.
• Flag opportunities/risks early: e.g., rising chargebacks, promo abuse, or untapped upside etc.
• Regularly audit affiliate traffic and promotions for brand fit and quality.
• Monitor competitor affiliate strategies and commission benchmarks in health/wellness/DTC.
• Drive best practice on your client, and through your team; specifically, improving the quality of campaign delivery, innovation and automation.
• Develop and plan affiliate strategy largely independently, but with oversight of your line manager.
• Developing a rich understanding of your clients’ audience and the consumer journey for their vertical, always striving to deliver richer insight to clients.
• Ensuring timely delivery of all team reporting and analysis outputs.
• Ensure your direct reports have timely appraisals, and that these are logged into our HR portal.
• Maintain, and grow strong relationships with relevant day to day client stakeholders.
• Client facing presentations on strategy, campaign recommendations and subsequent results.
• Develop and maintain development plans, roadmaps, media plans, and lead on strategy.
• Work with your line manager to create high quality case studies to represent your clients’ best activation work, as well as entering (and winning!) industry awards.

Desirable Skills And Experience

• At least 2+ years’ experience within an Affiliate remit, ideally within an agency environment.
• Proven experience of working with enterprise level clients and large budgets.
• Must be able to communicate well, interpret search to clients and manage client expectations.
• Track record of successful client and team relationship building.
• Good numeracy skills with strong knowledge/experience of MS Excel.
• Management experience is desirable but not essential.
• Strong time management skills and ability to prioritise workload across your direct reports.
• Excellent communicator – written and verbal, with the ability to present confidently.