The World Surf League is seeking a technical Manager, Ad Operations to lead traffic, delivery and programmatic sales/yield for its digital platforms - including worldsurfleague.com, the WSL iOS and Android mobile apps, and the WSL OTT apps (Apple TV, Samsung TV, Roku). This is an exciting opportunity to own Ad Ops & Yield for a global League with a unique, digital-first approach to live sports. It offers value exposure to WSL’s sales and engineering teams, agency partners, programmatic and digital vendors, and live ops crew. This role reports directly into our SVP, Revenue Operations & Merchandise. The role sits in our WSL in El Segundo, CA- however we are open to a remote employee should the right candidate be located outside of Los Angeles.
Responsibilities include (but not limited to):
Digital Ad Traffic
- End to end ad traffic including line item setup and QA in Google Ad Manager (GAM) for both livestreams and on-demand content
- Night and weekends sometimes required
- Both display and video traffic included
- Experience with line item QA and troubleshooting; owns the QA process
- Screenshot generation
Programmatic Sales Operations
- Working directly with programmatic demand partners and building regular meeting cadence with all partners to optimize technical performance
- Yield analysis & ongoing price floor optimization
- Optimizing ad requests to maximize fill
- Proactively look for new opportunities to scale demand and performance in the programmatic space
- Opportunity to pursue PG or PMP sales if desired
Ad Product Development & Improvement
Working closely with the WSL product team and engineers, continuously improve the WSL ad product; focus areas to include:
- First party data product buildout using new CDP
- Evaluating and optimizing ad UX across the site and apps
- Improving targeting capability across the site and apps
- Recommending & implementing yield improvement solutions like ad block recovery, etc.
- Recommending & implementing new / improved ad units across the site and apps
Qualifications:
- Ideally 3+ years of experience with a major digital publisher
- Deep experience with Google Ad Manager
- Working knowledge of HTML
- Experience with debugging tools (e.g. Charles)
- Experience working with a variety of creative types including video, display, rich display, HTML5, etc.
- Experience working with development and engineering teams
- Livestreaming experience and live ops experience a major plus
- Yield management analysis & experience a major plus
- Experience with header bidding in both video and display
- Programmatic sales experience / PMP or PG deal management a major plus
Personal Attributes:
- Above all, integrity and honesty
- Entrepreneurial; willingness to work independently with the best business practices in mind
- An exceptional work ethic
- Exceptional attention to detail
- Masterful organizational skills
- An enthusiasm for coaching, teaching and the development of people
- Optimism and energy for the brand and its future
- An open and collaborative nature
- A high degree of self-awareness of one’s own personal style, strengths and weaknesses and motivational triggers.
- Intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for learning.
- Action Oriented—enjoys working hard and looks for challenges; able to act and react as necessary, even if limited information is available.
Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: equal opportunity employer M/F/D/V
Salary Range: $85,000.00- $100,000.00 based on relevant experience
Top Skills
What We Do
The World Surf League (WSL) is a global sports media & entertainment company and the governing body of and path to professional surfing. The league partners with brands to create and deliver transformational partnerships that deliver next-generation, innovative, purpose-driven engagement platforms that have both regional and global relevance and scale. The league owns and distributes the rights to The Championship Tour, which crowns men’s and women’s elite world champions each year. As a top-tier Olympic qualifier, WSL will send 18 top-ranking men and women to France in 2024, located in Teahupo’o, Tahiti.
A division of The WSL, WSL Studios is a full-service original entertainment production engine, committed to delivering a broad range of high-quality lifestyle storylines to the world. Our content is transformative and celebrates surfing, the ocean, and human potential. Our studio is producing documentaries and series for major media companies like HBO, The Walt Disney Company, and Apple TV. Our latest launch is Make or Break season 2, which is a worldwide hit.
The WSL is distributed on television in 525M+ homes worldwide. The league has been a leader in live streaming in the sports industry on platforms like Facebook, Youtube, and WSL.com/APP. The league and its athletes have a collective social following of over 100M+ and are reaching new audiences via connected devices and are one of the fastest growing sports on Tik-Tok.
Join us! For all inquiries/ opportunities please reach out to [email protected]
