Associate Director, Programmatic

Company Overview 

At Horizon Media, we are committed to fostering innovation and achieving success for our clients' businesses through exemplary media planning and buying. Within Horizon, the Programmatic media capability plays a pivotal role in ensuring that our clients' messages and value propositions resonate with consumers amidst a rapidly evolving media landscape. Horizon is devoted to investing in technology, automation, and artificial intelligence to enhance our offerings, making them as intelligent, sophisticated, interconnected, effective, and distinguished as possible. Programmatic media planning and activation goes to the heart of Horizon’s investment focus. 

Job Summary 

The role Associate Director, Programmatic seeks a knowledgeable programmatic practitioner who is capable of managing multiple stakeholders, both internal and external, in organizing a unified alignment for the most impactful ways to deliver media programmatically.  This person must also be incredibly versed in platform specifics in order to function as the last set of eyes approving the accuracy and set up design of in platform architecture in relation to the media plan structure.   Strategic thinking ability is a must as the role also takes a leadership position around custom algorithm implementation for clients under management, as well as a thoughtful and intentional inventory and supply path approach.   

Main Duties and Responsibilities 

60% Account Management 

• The main POC:  Serve as the main day-to-day point of contact & escalation point for internal partners and external contacts as relates to delivering excellence with speed, expertise and helpfulness.  Ensures plans are conducive to client goals. 

• Final approver:  Reviews DSP setup as the last reviewer in the QA process, providing all systems go approval for launch and tracking in-campaign changes with an equally hawkish eye.   

• Money management:  Responsible for coordinating the makegood coverage response in instances of mishaps.  Uses strong ecosystem relationships and understanding of buy mechanics to first explore creative solutions with existing partners and platforms.   

• Custom thinker:  Evaluates each plan with a fresh perspective on a custom algorithm strategy and application that can make a difference, as well as how a bespoke inventory and supply approach can deliver efficiencies in costs and performance.  Strive for innovation and 1st to market opportunities for your clients. 

• Eagle eye:  See across the entire process to identify spots to step in and mitigate risk.  Ensure a positive working relationship with your team and DAT, BST, analytics, and client. 

40% Learning & Development 

• Internal health check:  Lead owner of adoption of internal products and solutions for our meta dsp, incentives tracker, marketplace solutions, updated initiatives requiring rollout, as well as cross-discipline coordination for united broader product and solution support.   

• Grower of people:  Establishes a framework for skill development and knowledge growth that can be used to track the maturation and readiness of junior team members for more responsibility and opportunity.  Ensure growth & development of team 

Additional Responsibilities 

• Help engineer processes to improve operation workflow, as needed 

• Institutionalize best practices for bidding, budget management, ad operations, and reporting 

• Socialize and document programmatic team learnings from optimization 

• Develop and publish POVs to inform clients and agency personnel about changes in programmatic marketplaces and technology 

• Foresee and plan for new workflows, processes, and capabilities required to meet the needs of new and future programmatic clients  and ensure team adheres to processes and established ways of working 

Knowledge and Skills Required 

• Able to develop, implement, and improve business processes 

• Proven ability to thrive in highly collaborative work environments 

• A team-oriented manager with strong delegation and organization skills 

• Solutions-oriented problem solver 

• Self-starter, takes initiative 

• Strong communicator and presenter.  Be able to craft a story to key stakeholders and management. 

• Able to actively seek out and implement feedback 

• Desire to be nimble and flexible to succeed in a fast-paced and ever-changing environment 

• Business mature individual who exudes professionalism and respect, will lead by example 

• Committed to the success of the team 

• Strong leader, eager to grow and develop team members 

• Supporter of and advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion Advanced ability in Microsoft Excel expected. 

• Comfort level with being able to parallel path and work across multiple workstreams and clients at the same time. 

Preferred Skills & Experience 

• 5+ years previous in-platform programmatic experience 

• Expert level understanding of programmatic buying and planning 

• Experience managing a team 

• Effective communication and presentation skills 

• Familiarity with multiple DSPs 

• Proficient in Excel and PowerPoint 

• Supervisory Responsibilities 

• Management responsibility for team structure aligned to account portfolio. 

• Certificates, Licenses, and Registrations 

• None required. 

• Physical Activity and Work Environment 

• None required. 

• The statements herein are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by employees and are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. Furthermore, they do not establish a contract for employment and are subject to change at the discretion of the employer. 

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