Paid Media Lead in Manchester

We’re looking for an exceptional Paid Media Lead to lead and evolve our paid media offering across paid search and paid social. This is a senior leadership role for someone with deep channel expertise, strong commercial instinct, and the ambition to shape product, build capability, and drive meaningful growth for both clients and the agency.

Working across a diverse mix of clients, from ambitious growth businesses to established multi-nationals, you’ll define strategy, raise the standard of delivery, and help push our Performance proposition forward. You’ll also play a central role in advancing our automation agenda, improving efficiency, strengthening performance, and creating competitive advantage through smarter ways of working.

Purpose of the role

Reporting to the Discoverability & Growth Strategy Director, you will be instrumental in scaling and maturing our paid media capability at Trunk. You’ll define what best-in-class paid media looks like for the agency, lead the development of our product offering, and champion automation, measurement, audience strategy, and creative testing approaches that improve both efficiency and effectiveness. Working closely with the wider Performance and Creative teams, you’ll deliver outstanding outcomes for clients while helping shape the next stage of the agency’s growth.

What you’ll do

• Own and evolve the agency’s paid media product, defining our service offering, pricing models, and competitive positioning.
• Lead the automation agenda by identifying, testing, and implementing opportunities that reduce manual workload while improving performance outcomes.
• Build and document scalable frameworks, processes, and methodologies that can be applied consistently across accounts and team members.
• Develop proprietary tools, scripts, dashboards, and workflow improvements that strengthen our offer and create operational efficiency.
• Define and lead paid media strategy across paid search and paid social, ensuring activity is aligned to clear commercial goals and measurable business outcomes.

Innovation & capability building

• Champion emerging capabilities across paid media, including AI-driven optimisation, privacy-first measurement, audience strategy, creative testing, and automation-led delivery.
• Create training and knowledge-sharing initiatives that upskill the team in advanced channel strategy, platform innovation, and smarter ways of working.
• Build strong relationships with platform partners to maintain leading-edge knowledge and access to new opportunities.
• Contribute to agency-wide innovation initiatives and thought leadership, helping position Trunk as a credible authority in modern paid media.
• Own senior client relationships, translating performance into meaningful business insight, strategic direction, and clear recommendations.
• Drive commercial impact through client retention, growth opportunities, and new business support.
• Lead audits, strategic reviews, and pitch input for new business opportunities, showcasing the strength of our proposition and our approach to automation and performance.
• Line manage and develop a Paid Media team, supporting their progression and helping build leadership capability within the team.
• Set high standards for planning, optimisation, testing, reporting, and account leadership across the paid media function.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, experimentation, accountability, and automation-first thinking.

Analysis & integration

• Analyse cross-account performance data to identify trends, opportunities, and strategic insight that strengthen the wider practice.
• Work closely with Creative, SEO, and other Performance teams to deliver integrated strategies that connect channel planning with audience, message, and conversion outcomes.
• Identify where automation can enhance delivery without replacing strong strategic thinking, creative judgement, or collaboration.

Requirements

• 5+ years working in paid media with demonstrable strategic and commercial impact.
• Proven track record of implementing automation solutions, including scripts, rules, API integrations, platform automation, or custom tools that delivered measurable efficiency or performance gains.
• Deep expertise across paid search and paid social spanning lead generation, e-commerce, and brand performance.
• Experience managing £5m+ in annual ad spend across multiple accounts.
• Track record of consistently delivering 25%+ YoY performance improvements.
• Proven experience managing and developing paid media professionals.

Technical & strategic capabilities

• Strong product thinking, with the ability to define, package, and evolve service offerings that meet market needs.
• Advanced knowledge of AI-driven optimisation, automation strategies, privacy-first measurement approaches, and modern platform capabilities across search and social.
• Experience building or implementing reporting, optimisation, and workflow automation tools.
• Strong understanding of creative testing, audience strategy, and full-funnel planning across paid media.
• Strategic thinker who can balance long-term vision with short-term execution.
• Exceptional analytical skills, with the ability to turn complex data into clear, actionable insight.

Commercial & leadership skills

• Strong commercial acumen with experience driving client growth and supporting new business.
• Confident presenting to C-level stakeholders and translating technical channel performance into business value.
• Self-directed, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and move initiatives forward independently.
• Clear perspective on paid media’s evolving role in the marketing mix, with the confidence to influence both client and agency thinking.
• Outstanding communication skills, both written and verbal.
• A genuine drive to improve how things work, with a strong bias for action, efficiency, and building smarter systems.

Your rewards

• Competitive salary with 11 life balance days (a half day each month, except December).
• Additional holiday for each year of service, up to a total of 5 extra days.
• Early finish on a Friday.
• Option to buy an extra week’s holiday.
• Private health insurance covering pre-existing conditions, cancer care, and cashback for routine optical and dental treatments.
• Life assurance.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay.

And we offer

• Working from our Manchester office with flexibility for hybrid working.
• Access to a personal trainer/nutritionist, free fruit, and breakfast.
• Mental health support and access to professional therapists through ‘Spill’.
• Yearly peer feedback and performance reviews tailored to personal development plans and objectives.
• Access to industry-accredited professional qualifications through our IPA membership.
• Employee voice: we consult our people on matters affecting them and encourage participation in surveys, our suggestions box and employee awards.
• A social buddy, monthly agency socials, and events put on by our culture committee.
• Lunch & Learn events to gain more understanding of different facets of agency life.