Manager, Paid Media

Position Overview

The Manager, Paid Media is responsible for maximizing the impact of Red Robin's marketing investments by identifying, prioritizing, and activating traffic growth opportunities across channels, markets, trade areas, and guest segments.

This role serves as the strategic owner of paid media investment and optimization, partnering closely with Business Intelligence, Guest Growth & Decisioning, Brand, Digital, Operations, franchisees, and agency partners to translate market intelligence, guest behavior, trade area opportunities, and performance insights into growth strategies that drive traffic and profitable sales.

Success in this role requires moving beyond traditional media management and platform metrics to evaluate business performance through the lens of traffic, incrementality, guest behavior, trade area opportunities, channel effectiveness, and return on investment. The ideal candidate combines media expertise with strong business acumen and can leverage tools such as Placer AI, Spatial AI, guest intelligence, analytics, and attribution data to influence where and how Red Robin invests marketing dollars.

This role works collaboratively with agency partners and cross-functional teams to optimize channel investments, identify growth opportunities, and ensure media strategies align with company growth priorities and First Choice objectives. The role also serves as a strategic partner to Brand and agency teams, ensuring audience insights, media performance, and asset performance collectively inform future channel, messaging, and creative decisions.

Key Responsibilities:

Traffic Growth Strategy

• Identify traffic growth opportunities across markets, trade areas, occasions, and guest segments
• Leverage Placer AI, Spatial AI, guest intelligence, and business performance data to identify and prioritize growth opportunities
• Translate market intelligence, guest behavior, and business performance data into actionable growth strategies
• Partner with Business Intelligence and Guest Growth & Decisioning teams to prioritize growth opportunities
• Develop recommendations that support traffic, sales, and profitable growth objectives
• Monitor competitive activity, market dynamics, and guest behavior trends to identify emerging opportunities
• Partner with Brand, Creative, and agency teams to ensure audience, channel, and asset performance insights inform future creative development and messaging strategies

Media Investment & Optimization

• Own paid media investment strategy and budget allocation recommendations
• Optimize channel mix across paid media channels to maximize business impact
• Develop multi-channel investment strategies that align audience, market, and business opportunities
• Evaluate channel performance through the lens of traffic, conversion, incrementality, and return on investment
• Recommend budget shifts based on performance, market opportunities, and emerging trends
• Continuously test and optimize investment strategies to improve effectiveness
• Partner with agency teams to improve targeting, audience strategies, and investment efficiency

Agency Partnership & Performance Management

• Lead media agency strategy, planning, and performance management
• Partner with agency teams to align media performance with business outcomes and growth objectives
• Evaluate and strengthen recommendations using guest intelligence, market insights, trade area data, and business performance metrics
• Ensure agency plans align with company growth priorities and business objectives
• Collaborate with agencies to identify new opportunities, technologies, and optimization approaches

Measurement & Decisioning

• Leverage Placer AI, Spatial AI, guest intelligence, attribution, and performance data to inform decisions
• Utilize trade area segmentation, audience intelligence, and behavioral insights to improve investment decisions
• Move beyond traditional media metrics to evaluate business impact and opportunity creation
• Partner with analytics teams to measure incrementality and effectiveness
• Develop insights and recommendations that improve investment decisions and channel performance
• Evaluate creative, audience, and channel performance to identify opportunities for improved engagement and business outcomes
• Translate asset performance insights into recommendations that improve future creative development, messaging, and media effectiveness
• Connect media performance to traffic, sales, guest acquisition, and business outcomes

Cross Functional Leadership

• Partner with Guest Growth & Decisioning to align audience and investment strategies
• Collaborate with Brand, Digital, Operations, Business Intelligence, franchisees, and agency partners to drive growth initiatives
• Build strong partnerships with franchisees and field stakeholders to align media investments with local market opportunities
• Influence cross-functional decisions through data-driven recommendations and business cases
• Champion a culture of testing, learning, collaboration, and continuous optimization
• Help evolve Red Robin's approach from channel management to demand and traffic optimization
• Ensure learnings from asset, audience, and channel performance are incorporated into future campaign planning and creative strategy

Success Measures

• Traffic growth
• Incremental traffic and sales
• Return on marketing investment
• Cost per acquisition
• Channel contribution to business performance
• Market and trade area growth
• Incrementality and media effectiveness
• Optimization of marketing investment across channels
• Creative and asset performance effectiveness
• Contribution to First Choice growth initiatives

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• 5+ years of experience in paid media, performance marketing, demand generation, or related disciplines required; experience working both agency-side and client-side preferred, with demonstrated ability to translate media performance into business growth opportunities and investment decisions.
• Strong understanding of paid media strategy across search, social, video, display, CTV, programmatic, and emerging channels
• Demonstrated experience translating business objectives into channel investment strategies
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret complex performance data and develop actionable recommendations
• Experience leveraging customer insights, market intelligence, attribution, and analytics to influence investment decisions
• Experience utilizing trade area intelligence, audience segmentation, Placer AI, Spatial AI, or similar market intelligence tools preferred
• Experience managing media agencies and driving alignment around business outcomes
• Knowledge of incrementality, attribution, measurement, and media effectiveness methodologies
• Ability to balance strategic thinking with strong operational execution
• Strong communication, presentation, storytelling, and executive influence skills
• Demonstrated ability to build partnerships, influence stakeholders, and drive alignment across cross-functional teams and franchise organizations
• Experience working with large budgets and optimizing investment across channels
• Strong project management and organizational skills
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite, including Excel and PowerPoint

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience connecting media strategy to customer behavior, guest acquisition, trade area opportunities, and business growth outcomes
• Restaurant, hospitality, retail, eCommerce, or consumer marketing experience strongly preferred
• Experience working in partnership with analytics, business intelligence, customer insights, and franchise organizations
• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Analytics, Economics, or related field required, or equivalent combination of education and experience

Red Robin is an Equal Opportunity & E-Verify Employer