Senior Director, Paid Media

Responsibilities

• Own the full paid media strategy across social, search, native, display, and retargeting, with Meta as your primary channel and proving ground
• Set channel-level investment strategies, budget allocation frameworks, scaling criteria, and ROI guardrails across the portfolio
• Define the strategic direction for paid media, aligning it with MediaAlpha's broader growth strategy
• Ensure positive ROI across all paid media investment; own performance accountability end-to-end
• Hire, lead, coach, and develop a team of channel-specific analysts (paid social, paid search, native/display, etc.)
• Translate campaign performance into clear, executive-ready narratives that connect channel metrics to business outcomes: cost per lead, revenue per lead, GP contribution, and margin
• Partner directly with cross-functional leadership, extending your influence beyond the paid media team
• Leverage AI tooling (both off-the-shelf and custom-built) to accelerate creative production and UGC video at scale
• Build and run a high-velocity creative testing engine across static, video, and UGC formats, with a clear methodology for learning and scaling winners
• Understand how ad creative affects downstream quality and conversion, and use that lens to guide every creative and targeting decision

Requirements

• You have personally managed $1M+ per month in Meta ad spend. This is a hard floor, not a preference; you've done this hands-on, not just at a strategic level
• A proven track record running profitable, ROI-positive paid media in the lead generation space. eCommerce or brand-building backgrounds are not the right fit for this role
• Experience working in a performance-first environment where every dollar of spend is expected to earn its place
• A genuine command of what makes paid social work: creative diagnosis, audience strategy, bidding mechanics, and the ability to distinguish a creative problem from a targeting problem from a measurement problem
• Experience running ads across search, display, native, and retargeting platforms - even if Meta is your primary channel
• Experience building or scaling a paid media team, including hiring and developing junior channel specialists
• Genuine enthusiasm for using AI tools to accelerate creative production at scale
• A strong understanding of how ad creative, landing page experience, and lead intent interact to drive downstream quality, not just top-of-funnel volume
• Experience in the insurance vertical or adjacent regulated categories (financial services, health, legal) is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with lead gen compliance requirements, including TCPA, state-level advertising rules, and platform-specific policy constraints is strongly preferred