Paid Media Specialist / SR Paid Media Specialist

Are you a performance marketing trailblazer ready to make an immediate, tangible impact on a global platform? Aquent, a leading talent solutions partner, is seeking a visionary Paid Media Specialist to drive significant growth for a premier platform that is defining its industry. This is your opportunity to not just manage campaigns, but to sculpt the future of user acquisition, transforming data into actionable strategies that propel our client's brand forward during a pivotal phase of brand transformation.

About Our Client

Our client is a global leader in its specialized platform category, committed to connecting individuals through innovative digital experiences. They are currently embarking on a significant brand transformation, making this an exceptionally exciting time to join their dynamic team. As an Aquent talent, you will play a crucial role in their journey, contributing directly to their mission of delivering unparalleled value to their user base.

About the Opportunity

We are looking for a highly skilled and hands-on Paid Media Specialist to take full ownership of paid acquisition, from strategy to execution, across a diverse range of digital channels. This role is perfect for a builder who thrives on identifying opportunities, optimizing performance, and delivering measurable results. You will be instrumental in building robust campaigns, structuring accounts for scale, shipping impactful ads, meticulously analyzing performance data, and continuously refining strategies to achieve ambitious growth targets. Your expertise will directly influence the acquisition of new users and the overall success of the platform, working closely with Creative, Data & Analytics, Product, and Lifecycle teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end build and management of paid campaigns across Google Ads (Search, PMax, Demand Gen, YouTube), Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other emerging platforms.
• Develop and implement advanced account structures, including campaign taxonomy, ad-group logic, audience layers, bidding strategies, naming conventions, and asset organization, to ensure scalability and efficiency.
• Execute daily optimizations across all active accounts, performing bid adjustments, negative targeting, audience pruning, budget reallocation, and creative rotation to maintain or improve target CPA, ROAS, and payback metrics.
• Manage substantial monthly ad spend, demonstrating the discipline to scale investments when performance excels and strategically pull back when efficiency declines.
• Deploy sophisticated bidding strategies (tCPA, tROAS, Advantage+, PMax, value-based), understanding when to leverage automated systems and when to intervene with manual adjustments.
• Act as the primary liaison with ad platform representatives, securing beta access, resolving policy escalations, and swiftly addressing account suspensions.
• Own the full spectrum of event tracking and conversion setup, utilizing GTM, GA4, server-side infrastructure, MMP/attribution tools, and platform pixels/CAPIs.
• Enforce rigorous tracking discipline, ensuring clean UTMs, accurate conversion events, deduplicated pixels, and a comprehensive measurement plan for every launch.
• Independently analyze performance data, pulling insights from dashboards and data warehouses (Looker, Tableau, or similar) to translate metrics like ROAS, CPA, CTR, CPC, and CPM into LTV, CAC, payback, and contribution margin for leadership.
• Drive a continuous creative testing engine for ad copy, hooks, static and video creative, thumbnails, and landing-page pairings, with a minimum of weekly iterations.
• Provide precise briefs to the Creative team, incorporating performance data, competitor insights, clear hypotheses, format specifications, and measurable success metrics, and manage the feedback loop.
• Proactively combat creative fatigue by tracking CTR decay, frequency, and cost curves per creative, rotating assets before performance diminishes.
• Recommend optimal channel-mix strategies and monthly budget allocations, identifying the most cost-effective avenues for incremental subscriber acquisition.
• Support upper-funnel media planning, measurement, and testing, including YouTube, connected TV, and select traditional/OOH tests where a strong business case exists.
• Foster seamless partnerships with Lifecycle Marketing & CRM, Growth Experimentation, and Web teams to ensure a cohesive member journey across paid, on-site, and lifecycle touchpoints.
• Conduct ongoing competitor intelligence using industry tools to identify winning strategies, and inform our own approaches.

Must-Have Qualifications

• 3 to 8+ years of hands-on paid media experience, directly planning, buying, and managing full-funnel paid campaigns across paid search, paid social, and paid video, preferably within a consumer subscription, marketplace, mobile-first, or specialized consumer platform environment.
• Proven ownership of monthly ad spends ranging from $100K to $500K+, demonstrating measurable results in scaling spend while maintaining or improving CAC and payback.
• Deep, in-the-tool fluency in Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager. Direct hands-on experience with at least one of TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, or LinkedIn is required; experience with multiple platforms is a strong advantage.
• Comprehensive tracking and analytics expertise, including working knowledge of GTM, GA4, server-side tracking, and CAPI setups. You should have built these systems yourself, not just consumed their output.
• Strong analytical fluency, comfortable with Excel/Sheets (pivot tables, VLOOKUPs, data modeling) and adept at pulling your own insights from data visualization tools (Looker, Tableau, or a data warehouse). SQL proficiency is a significant plus.
• Ready to make an immediate impact: capable of auditing an existing ad account, identifying misstructured or wasteful elements, and launching a better-instrumented campaign within your first week.
• Demonstrated AI fluency, actively utilizing tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or similar in your daily workflow for ad copy generation, creative briefing, performance analysis, and workflow automation.
• Exceptional operator's discipline, characterized by on-time delivery, meticulous QA, clean naming conventions, and thorough documentation of processes and actions.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Experience within a consumer subscription business or a top consumer/DTC agency, with a proven track record of scaling spend while holding CAC and payback targets.
• Google Ads and Meta Blueprint certifications, or equivalent demonstrated proficiency.
• Hands-on experience with AI-driven media buying, creative generation, and optimization tools.
• For Senior-level candidates: Experience with at least two of the following: programmatic DSP, connected TV, incrementality testing, geo holdouts, or Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM).

About Aquent Talent:

Aquent Talent connects the best talent in marketing, creative, and design with the world's biggest brands.

Our eligible talent get access to amazing benefits like subsidized health, vision, and dental plans, paid sick leave, and retirement plans with a match. We also offer free online training through Aquent Gymnasium. More information on our awesome benefits!

Aquent is an equal-opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics. We're about creating an inclusive environment-one where different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives are valued, and everyone can contribute, grow their careers, and thrive.

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