Director, ESPN Paid Media

New York City, NY (On-site)

$172K/yr – $237K/yrDirector/Executive10+ years expFull time

Posted 2 months ago

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Job Summary

Own and orchestrate ESPN DTC paid media strategy across multi‑channel growth, balancing CPA and subscriber targets through cross‑functional planning, live-event activations, and rigorous testing to optimize acquisition and engagement.

  • Strategic alignment: translate profit objectives into integrated paid media plans across social, search, programmatic, and video.
  • Cross‑functional ownership: partner with product, analytics, programming, finance, and marketing to sequence investments around tentpoles and live events.
  • Measurement & experimentation: champion structured testing, attribution insight, and optimization to improve CPA, LTV, and subscriber growth.

Job Description

Responsibilities

  • Strategic Paid Media Leadership & Business Alignment - Serve as the primary liaison between Media and ESPN DTC business stakeholders, translating profit objectives into paid media strategies that drive acquisition, engagement, and revenue growth.
  • Cross-Functional Partnership & Growth Planning - Partner with product, analytics, programming, finance, and marketing leadership to align media investment strategies with key sports tentpoles, programming priorities, and seasonal growth initiatives.
  • Paid Media Messaging Strategy - Lead the strategic direction of performance-driven creative, ensuring messaging, formats, and assets are optimized for platform performance, audience relevance, and conversion impact including our approach to tune-in and DCO messaging.
  • Live Sports Campaign Activation & Weekend Operations - Oversee operational readiness and real-time campaign activation during major sports, content and live event moments globally, ensuring agile response to programming changes and audience demand spikes.
  • Testing, Innovation & Performance Experimentation - Champion a culture of continuous innovation by advancing structured testing and experimentation across media strategy, audience targeting, creative approaches, and emerging platforms, leveraging insights to unlock new growth opportunities and improve acquisition efficiency.
  • Investment Optimization & Measurement Strategy - Guide data-driven decision making through performance analysis, experimentation frameworks, and attribution insights to continuously optimize media investment against CPA, LTV, and subscriber growth targets.
  • Multi-Channel Performance Marketing Oversight - Oversee the execution and optimization of paid media across social, search, programmatic, video, and emerging platforms, ensuring cohesive full-funnel strategies that scale subscriber acquisition.
  • Operational Excellence & Team Leadership - Establish best-in-class operating processes, performance frameworks, and team workflows that enable scalable, efficient campaign execution while fostering a high-performance team culture.

Requirements

  • 10+ years of experience in performance marketing, paid media or growth marketing.
  • Experience with sports, live event marketing and real-time campaign activation.
  • Proven success driving customer acquisition for subscription, DTC or digital products.
  • Deep expertise across performance channels including paid social, search, programmatic and video platforms.
  • Demonstrated success integrating creative strategy with performance marketing to drive measurable results.
  • Experience overseeing large-scale, multi-channel paid media investments nationally
  • Experience leading and developing high-performing marketing teams.
  • Strong analytical mindset with experience leveraging data, experimentation, and attribution insights to drive decisions.
  • Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment and manage real-time marketing opportunities tied to live events.

Preferred

  • MBA or Master’s degree in Marketing, Business, Analytics, or a related discipline preferred.
  • Additional coursework or certifications in digital marketing, performance marketing, media analytics, or data science are a plus.
  • Familiarity with advanced measurement approaches, including experimentation, incrementality testing and multi-touch attribution.
  • Background in media, entertainment, streaming ecosystems.
  • Experienced working with matrixed organizations and partnering across marketing, analytics, product and content teams.

Benefits

  • medical, financial, and/or other benefits
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The Walt Disney Studios

For 100 years, The Walt Disney Studios has been the foundation on which The Walt Disney Company was built. Today it brings quality movies, episodic storytelling, and stage plays to consumers throughout the world. The Walt Disney Studios encompasses a collection of respected film studios, including Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, Searchlight Pictures, and 20th Century Studios. It is also home to Disney Theatrical Group, producer of world-class stage shows, as well as Disney Music Group.

Burbank, California, USA
2.6K employees (859 in marketing)

Traffic Signals

Monthly Visitors
2.2M
Monthly Google Ads Budget
$45.1K
Traffic Source Mix
Search
31.2%
Direct
46%
Referral
13.5%
Social
8.2%
Paid
0.8%

Headcount Trend

Current headcount: ~2.6K

Marketing Team

Marketing Team Size
525 (20% of company)
Median Career Experience
14 years
Median Tenure
7.4 years
Marketing Roles Posted (Last 30 Days)
6

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