Programmatic Account Director

About WPP Media: WPP is the creative transformation company. We use the power of creativity to build better futures for our people, planet, clients and communities. WPP Media is WPP’s global media collective. In a world where media is everywhere and in everything, we bring the best platform, people, and partners together to create limitless opportunities for growth.

About Wavemaker: A Leading WPP Media Brand. Wavemaker positively provokes growth for clients by reshaping consumer decision-making and experiences through media, content, and technology. Our name is both our mission and our method. We do our best work for brave brands and people who relish being challenged to go further and faster, together.

Role Summary and Impact: The Programmatic Account Director will be responsible for the client relationship as well as the activation team of managers and executives. They will have oversight of the full campaign life cycle; in channel planning, managing set up, optimizing campaigns, ensuring delivery to Wavemaker standards, and reporting the results directly to the client. This will be across an FMCG client with a focus on Branding campaigns.

Key Responsibilities

• Campaign Management: Strengthen the team’s delivery by ensuring use of best practice templates and process documents. Understand client pressures and priorities for the upcoming period. Ensure that tangible actions are taken and delegated amongst the team to successfully deliver upon. Identify which products and solutions could answer your client’s business challenges that have been developed within the group. Good understanding of wider digital media mix and ability to elucidate the role for programmatic amongst digital media, working with the planning to grow spend for your clients. Drive the in-channel learning and innovation agenda for the team, ensuring your team is taking advantage of alphas/betas. Manage the shape of spend in your team to ensure maximum value driven.
• Client and Partner Management: Build relationships with key senior client contacts across your clients; understand core priorities and drive forward the testing roadmap. Ensure the good reputation of the team. Oversight of client audit procedure for channel to make sure targets are met and potential issues escalated. Maintain strong relationships with senior media owners, tech partners and other service providers. Present confidently in new business pitches, department, and agency team meetings.
• People Management: Demonstrate strong leadership skills; be the point of escalation for your team and the wider department. Develop case studies for internal use and specialist external awards through a culture of sharing. Ensure best in class team training and creation of personalized development plans. Strong working relationships with key senior stakeholders within the agency e.g., Head of Addressable. Be an active member of the display team community, organizing fun events and driving the collective knowledge base forward.
• Operational Excellence: Manage your team to deliver flawless end to end campaign activation and client billing. Support on the day-to-day QA process, minimizing errors and ensuring consistent and accurate adherence to process with both teams locally and in the Global Hub. Top negotiation skills to deliver unrivalled value for our clients and teams.

Skills And Experience

• Proven experience in Display activation and driving continued excellence/innovation.
• Nice to have experience trading programmatic self-serve within core trading platforms, DV360, TTD and Amazon.
• Ability to translate technical and complex points to non-technical audiences and coach others to do the same.
• Management experience, teaching and developing a more junior team member.
• Analytically minded with an aptitude for handling large data sets to identify trends and actionable insights.
• Ability to develop and execute comprehensive testing roadmaps– audience, media, creative.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, will be particularly important in building & developing stakeholder relationships; internal, client and supplier.
• Ability to communicate effectively with people from all diverse backgrounds, cultures, countries.

Life at WPP Media & Benefits: Our passion for shaping the next era of media includes investing in our employees to help them do their best work, and we’re just as committed to employee growth as we are to responsible media investment. WPP Media employees can tap into the global WPP Media & WPP networks to pursue their passions, grow their networks, and learn at the cutting edge of marketing and advertising. We have a variety of employee resource groups and host frequent in-office events showcasing team wins, sharing thought leadership, and celebrating holidays and milestone events. Our benefits include competitive medical, group retirement plans, vision, and dental insurance, significant paid time off, preferential partner discounts, and employee mental health awareness days.

WPP Media is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers. We believe the best work happens when we’re together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That’s why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.