Reports To: Managing Director, Performance
Direct Reports: Associate Directors across Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative
Scope: $15M P&L across three pillars: Paid Media (all paid channels), Programmatic, Creative
Location: Remote (U.S.) with travel to client and company events
Classification: Full-Time, Exempt, Senior Leadership
Overview
The SVP, Paid Media owns a $15M P&L spanning three pillars: Paid Media (all paid channels as one), Programmatic, and Creative. The role reports to the Managing Director, Performance, and is accountable for commercial outcomes, client retention, and the quality of work produced across all three pillars.
The SVP leads through Associate Directors who manage billable consultants executing the day-to-day. The SVP does not run campaigns. The SVP is a leader of leaders, a senior inspector of work at the moments that matter most to clients, and a coach to middle managers who are learning how to inspect work themselves.
The fundamental model of this role is a dual posture: personal inspection at the decisive moments in a client engagement, and operational leverage through Associate Directors the rest of the time. The SVP who gets this right is visible at the moments that determine retention and absent at the operational ones. The SVP who gets it wrong is either a bottleneck or invisible.
The Job
Inspect Work at the Moments That Matter
The SVP is personally present at the moments in a client engagement where the quality of the work determines the trajectory of the relationship. The SVP reads the strategy, stress-tests the creative brief, and pressure-checks the programmatic plan before it reaches the client. The SVP accountability at each moment in the client lifecycle is outlined below:
Sales-to-Ops Handoff: Personally review the handoff brief for any new client exceeding the SVP inspection threshold. Ensure the delivery team starts with a complete picture of the client’s business and commercial objectives.
Kickoff Call: Attend or review the kickoff for priority clients. Ensure scope, success metrics, and NSM alignment are calibrated before the relationship starts.
Project Phase: Inspect initial strategy and planning artifacts across Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative before first delivery. The right push at this moment sets the tone for the entire engagement.
NSM Setting: Personally validate the North Star Metric for every engagement above threshold. If NSM is wrong, nothing downstream matters.
Weekly Updates: Spot-check weekly updates on priority clients. Coach AsDs on what good communication looks like. Do not inspect every update — inspect the pattern.
Monthly Updates: Review monthly operational output on priority clients for substance, clarity, and connection to the client’s business outcomes.
QBRs: Personally pressure-test QBR decks before they go to the client. Attend QBRs for priority or at-risk accounts. This is the senior client moment — senior eyes must be on it.
6-Mo. Strategy Review: Inspect strategy recalibration work. Ensure the team is evolving the strategy based on real data, not inertia.
ABR: Personally lead or co-lead ABRs for top accounts. The case for renewal and expansion is made here — the SVP is present.
Renewal: Own the renewal conversation for priority accounts. Ensure commercial terms and relationship health are set up for 12-month lock-in.
The SVP defines “good” for each moment and each pillar — what a great paid media strategy looks like, what a great creative brief looks like, what a great programmatic plan looks like — and holds Strategists and AsDs accountable to that standard.
Find Leverage Through Associate Directors
Between the moments that matter, the SVP leads through their Associate Directors. The goal is to develop AsDs into real inspectors of work — not just project managers who run status meetings.
Run a consistent operating cadence with each AsD: what gets reviewed, how often, and what escalates versus what the AsD owns.
Coach AsDs on how to see work critically. Teach them what to look for, how to give feedback, and how to raise the floor on their Strategists and consultants.
Inspect how AsDs inspect. Attend their reviews occasionally. Read feedback they give their teams. Calibrate the standards across the organization.
Hold AsDs accountable for team quality and client health, not just delivery throughput.
Lead Across Paid Media, Programmatic & Creative
The SVP develops credibility and holds quality standards across three distinct pillars without being the deepest expert in any of them.
Maintain working fluency in Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative sufficient to inspect work credibly and push back with substance.
Identify and operationalize integration points across the three pillars. Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative should function as a single capability, not three parallel teams.
Hold discipline-specific quality standards. A paid search audit and a creative concept require different evaluation criteria — the SVP understands the difference and calibrates accordingly.
Represent Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative in cross-divisional leadership discussions. Own the practice’s position within the broader Performance division.
Commercial Ownership & P&L
The SVP owns a $15M P&L measured on four KPIs: Client Goal Attainment, NRR, Gross Profit Margin, and Monthly Recurring Revenue Retention.
Manage pricing, packaging, staffing, and resource allocation across the three pillars to protect Gross Profit Margin while maintaining client outcomes.
Monitor client health signals and deploy SVP attention (inspection, direct engagement) toward at-risk relationships before they become renewal problems.
Partner with the MD, Performance on expansion strategy, including identifying cross-sell opportunities into other Directive divisions.
Instrument operational leading indicators that predict commercial KPIs before they show up in the financials.
Client Relationship Ownership
For top and priority accounts, the SVP is personally present in the client relationship.
Build direct relationships with senior client stakeholders (VP, SVP, C-suite) on priority accounts.
Lead or co-lead QBRs, ABRs, and renewal conversations for top accounts.
Serve as the senior escalation point for the client and for the internal team.
Know the client’s business — their revenue model, their buyer, their competitive position — deeply enough to have strategic conversations that go beyond media execution.
Talent Development
The SVP is responsible for the growth of the leaders below them.
Develop Associate Directors into inspectors of work, not just project managers. This is the most important talent lever in the practice.
Know the Strategists on your AsDs’ teams — their strengths, their development areas, and what motivates them at Directive.
Partner with People Operations on hiring, performance management, and career development for the practice.
Build the bench of future AsDs and senior Strategists.
Key Performance Indicators
The SVP is measured on commercial outcomes and the operational leading indicators that predict them.
Commercial KPIs
Client Goal Attainment: Percentage of clients meeting or exceeding their contracted North Star Metrics.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR): Revenue retained from existing clients inclusive of expansion, contraction, and churn.
Gross Profit Margin: Revenue minus direct delivery costs across the $15M P&L.
Monthly Recurring Revenue Retention: Predictable monthly revenue retained across the existing book.
Operational Leading Indicators
These are the operational metrics the SVP monitors to predict commercial outcomes:
Inspection Coverage Rate: Percentage of priority-client lifecycle moments receiving direct SVP inspection.
AsD Quality Calibration Score: Audit score measuring consistency of quality standards applied by AsDs across their teams.
Strategy-to-Execution Alignment: Percentage of campaigns where the executed work ties back to documented client business objectives.
Client Escalation Velocity: Time from escalation trigger to SVP-level resolution, tracked across pillars.
Pilot-to-Contract Conversion Rate: Percentage of paid media pilots that convert to 12-month contracts.
Qualifications
Required
10+ years of paid media leadership experience, with demonstrated ownership of multi-channel paid practices at scale.
Experience managing middle managers (Associate Directors, Group Directors, or equivalent) with teams of billable consultants under them.
P&L ownership experience, including responsibility for gross margin and commercial outcomes.
Fluency across multiple paid channels (search, social, programmatic) with sufficient depth to inspect strategy and execution credibly.
Demonstrated experience developing middle managers into senior leaders.
Preferred
Agency or consulting background with exposure to B2B, B2C, or performance-driven client portfolios.
Experience integrating Creative into Paid Media practices, or leading cross-functional teams including Creative talent.
Experience managing programmatic at scale, including DSP partnerships and first-party data strategy.
Track record of building inspection and quality control systems in organizations that previously relied on individual heroics.
Who You Are
You are a senior operator who leads through structure and presence at the decisive moments. You know that in a services business, the quality of the work is the product — and you have the judgment to see what others miss when you look at a strategy, a brief, or a plan.
You lead through your Associate Directors, not around them. You develop them into real inspectors of work. You inspect how they inspect. You raise the floor on quality across your practice by teaching, calibrating, and holding standards.
You are credible across Paid Media, Programmatic, and Creative without being the deepest expert in any one of them. You can read a paid search audit, a creative brief, and a programmatic plan and push back on each with substance. You understand that different work requires different evaluation criteria.
You know the difference between a bottleneck and a leader. You are present where your presence matters and absent where your absence enables your team. You own a $15M P&L and you understand that every client outcome traces back to a moment where the work was inspected — or wasn’t.
What We Offer:
Compensation for this role includes a competitive base salary + strong bonus package
Medical, dental, vision plans, disability, and life insurance coverage for you and your family that fit your lifestyle
Including a 100% employer-paid plan for you and a 50% employer contribution for your dependents (US, CAD, MX)
Benefits to Support the Whole Person:
Mental - Access to certified therapists through Spring Health, membership to Headspace
Physical - Physical therapy through Omada, thousands of Aaptiv virtual workouts, complimentary One Medical membership for primary and virtual care
Time Off - Unlimited PTO (2-week minimum), Paid Company Holidays, Your Birthday Off, End of Year Recharge (Closed December 24 - January 1), Paid Parental Leave
Financial - Traditional and Roth 401(k) with a 3% company match
Bonus - Annual bonus based on tenure, which scales in total amount over time
Annual Company-wide Retreat
Work Environment Requirements
As a remote-first company, you’ll have the ability to work from your home office. For some positions, as posted, we will accommodate global opportunities where we have established businesses, including Canada, Mexico, and the UK. For global locations, you must have established and current work authorization and permanently reside in that country.
This role has the opportunity to operate 100% virtually from your home office. We primarily collaborate with our colleagues through virtual meetings (Zoom), and Slack. In this role, you will be required to operate a laptop computer (PC or Mac available), computer software platforms, and other office productivity tools as necessary. Due to the nature of this role, you must be able
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