Essence Senior Media Activation Manager

**About Essence**

Essence, part of GroupM, is a global data and measurement-driven media agency whose mission is to make advertising more valuable to the world. Clients include Google, Flipkart, NBCUniversal, L'Oréal and the Financial Times. The agency is more than 1,800 people strong, manages US$4B in annualised media spend, and deploys campaigns in 106 markets via 20 offices in APAC, EMEA and North America.

**About the role**

As a member of the Essence APAC programmatic team, you will help oversee and execute the tactical planning, setup and execution of programmatically purchased media campaigns across one or more countries via demand-side-platform (DSP). Campaign objectives can range from Branding (e.g. awareness, consideration, intent) to Direct Response (e.g. usage, acquisition, ROAS) and will leverage a combination of real-time and guaranteed buying across both open exchange and/or direct publishers as needed.

**Role responsibilities include but are not limited to**:

- Leads majority of programmatic functions for small to medium-size client
- Directly or indirectly (via management) support 1-3 markets/accounts
- Able to own up to 3 campaigns E2E at any one time while assisting on others as needed
- ~4o% time allocated to individual campaign assignments, ~60% time allocated to work outside of individual campaigns (e.g. management tasks, team projects, training others)
- Ensure all proposed planning tactics ladder up to higher level strategic thinking
- Act as escalation point for markets/accounts/pod level issues
- Excellent knowledge of media planning fundamentals e.g. reach, frequency, channels, formats
- Excellent knowledge of tactical essentials including such as inventory and data sources
- Strong knowledge of quarter level details including but not limited to number of campaigns, products, plan composition, flight dates, etc
- Strong knowledge of the programmatic/ad-tech ecosystem (publishers, data, platform, etc.) for majority of APAC markets
- Proactively spearhead conversations to expand programmatic marketplace as it pertains to planning (publishers, data, platform, etc.)
- Excellent understanding and ownership of relationship with adjacent and/or connected disciplines (e.g. Data Strategy, Analytics, AdOps, Experience)
- Communicates successes, failures, and escalations to line manager in a timely manner
- Directly responsible for managing 1-2 team members assuming staffing
- Creates positive atmosphere for team even when dealing with stressful situations
- Great project and time manager who demonstrates ability for managing time of others
- Complete ownership of outputs of assigned products. Able to identify and flag issues needing escalation, but generally able to resolve independently
- Strong understanding of team goals, and effectively supervises practice in day-to-day management of campaigns
- Oversees programmatic team contribution of insight to post-campaign wrap ups and is able to teach junior team members to build stories from data.
- Lead/involved in one or more discipline level projects, i.e. platform audits, supply-path optimisation, Performance/DR testing, internal process improvements
- Demonstrates out-of-the-box innovative thinking that can be pivoted into new best practices
- Contributes to and/or develops POVs/case studies on topics that benefits planning and/or programmatic team as a whole

**Desired background experience**
**_:_**

Required
- 4-6 years work experience on the programmatic/ad-tech buy-side (e.g. agency, trading desk, DSP company)
- Excellent proficiency planning and deploying campaigns using enterprise level DSPs (e.g. DV360, The Trade Desk, MediaMath)
- Experience planning and executing campaigns delivering against both Brand and Direct Response objectives
- Experience deploying campaigns across multiple environments/devices via both direct and open buying leveraging audience and/or contextual data as needed
- High attention to detail, and good organizational skills, with an understanding of optimization levers & testing approaches across programmatic platforms
- Experience directly managing multiple reports, with demonstrable skills in guiding the professional development of direct reports
- Highly developed interpersonal, team building and relationship management skills
- Strong analytical skills and a natural affinity for numbers is key; You must be able to analyze raw data, draw insights and develop actionable recommendations as needed
- Strong organization and time management skills. Able to prioritize recurring deliverables against ad hoc requests. Mindful of personal deliverables and projects without needing reminding from line manager
- Up-to-date knowledge on the current state of programmatic/ad/mar-tech with a POV on future developments
- A passion for everything digital, with an active interest and understanding of digital marketing/advertising industry trends

Desirable
- Strong Google stack experience
- Experience working with Data Mana