Media Buying Manager - Priorities USA

[Tom Egan]

Apply here: https://jobs.lever.co/priorities/d16e55d0-43cc-4e34-8d63-8d486d1794fe

Priorities USA is a voter-centric progressive advocacy organization and service center for the grassroots progressive movement. Priorities is committed to standing up to the Trump administration and its allies in order to build an economy that provides real opportunity for all families to get ahead, and to protect the fundamental, democratic ideal of equality for all Americans – regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

In 2018, we ran the largest digital advertising campaign on the Democratic side, and helped other organizations invest more and invest smarter in digital persuasion and mobilization. This cycle we are planning to double down on our commitment to digital media by building out an in-house buying team. We are looking to hire a media buying manager to oversee our in-house self-serving media buying team.

The right person for this role should:

• Have 4+ years of experience buying and reporting on digital media, including but not limited to using self-serve tools and programmatic platforms and other ad tech products. We are currently looking specifically for in-platform expertise in Adwords, Facebook Business Manager, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, and DoubleClick Bid Manager. (And if you’ve already converted to calling it DV360, props to you. Old habits die hard!)
• Understand campaign set-up, ad trafficking, in-platform campaign management, and measurement in a political context. You know the difference between a persuasion campaign, mobilization buy, and direct response ad -- and how to set up campaigns and pull the right levers in buying platforms to achieve those goals. You should have an opinion on what metrics are relevant, and when, based on your objective. You can see the process through from campaign structure to trafficking to a live buy to “landing the plane” just right, all in service of your overarching objective.
• Enjoy managing people in a digital media context. It is important to us to foster an environment on this team that is conducive to productivity and growth -- both on your part on the part of folks you manage. We believe that good management is a separate skill from good media buying, and that both are important to doing this job well.
• Be willing -- and excited! -- to try new things (and fail), learn from successes and mistakes, and adapt with new and changing information, in both the digital media and electoral landscapes. What you will do on a day-to-day basis will change over the course of your time in this role. You will be successful if you thrive in a fast-paced environment.
• Care about the work of electing Democrats up and down the ticket. We want to be upfront: Working in electoral politics can be hard! In order to hack it, you'll need to be deeply invested in both the outcome (hello, getting Trump out of office!), and how we get there: working with a dynamic and diverse team, elevating marginalized voices, speaking to communities that are sometimes left behind by Democratic paid media programs.
• Love a good spreadsheet. To run a great digital ads program we need keep track of many moving pieces at once. We are looking for someone with strong organizational skills and an eye for detail -- that means you, to-do list makers and color coders. If you’re not an Excel whiz, but you’re willing to learn, that’s a-okay too.

In this role, you will:

• Hire, teach and manage a team. You will manage a team of media buyers that run all our self-serve ad campaigns (mostly using Facebook Ads Manager, DV360, and AdWords). Although you won’t directly manage them, you will be involved in training and teaching a few classes of media fellows, who will participate in planning, buying, and reporting as full members of the team.
• Oversee the buying of millions of dollars of digital media. You will work with and advise media planners on selecting the right campaign objectives, targeting methods, audience breakouts, inventory types, and bidding strategies to match the goal of the buy, and set it all up in-platform. You’ll work with ad ops/reporting experts to traffic the ads in such a way that surfaces the appropriate data to report out, and you will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day management of the campaigns, adjusting based on in-platform metrics, formal reports, and stakeholder feedback. Once the cycle ramps up, you’ll be expected to do this for several campaigns at a time.
• Monitor and report on how it’s going. You’ll work with media planners and ad ops/reporting specialists to report on ad campaigns to a variety of stakeholders and adapt campaigns in response to reporting and feedback.
• Experiment! Some of the media buys you’ll manage will be tests to measure the efficacy of different media strategies, targeting techniques, or message/creative executions. Along with your media planner, you’ll work with the analytics team to set up the actual buys to comport with test design.

Reports to: Digital Media Director

Direct reports: Media buyers (currently 1, but the team will grow)

Compensation includes a competitive salary starting roughly around $80,000 - $90,000 but ultimately based on experience, and a benefits package that includes health care, paid holidays and vacation. People of color, women, people with disabilities, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. If you need an accommodation for disability to apply to this position, please let us know by emailing info [at] priorities [ dot ] org