Senior Associate, Digital Activation in Toronto

The Senior Associate, Digital Activation possesses advanced tactical knowledge and programmatic expertise to develop innovative strategies and bring them to life in media buying tools (DSPs) to deliver impactful business results across various channels. You are detail-oriented, strategic with a strong logical thought process, and an unparalleled focus on client solutions & campaign outcomes. Coupled with the ability to work collaboratively with audience strategy, communications design, and data & analytic teams, you will translate programmatic campaign requirements into actionable engagements with suitable inventory partners, data vendors, and technology providers.

You demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the programmatic ecosystem & its key parties and stay up to date with current trends & challenges facing the industry to assist the team in finding solutions to ensure a competitive edge for the client’s business.

Reporting to the Associate Director, Digital Activation (Team Lead), this interdisciplinary role requires a combination of strategy planning, hands-on execution & ongoing optimization of programmatic campaigns, as well as support for the Associate Director in training/coaching junior members and aiding in uplifting the overall efficiency of the team’s operation.

Key Responsibilities

The Senior Associate, Digital Activation is responsible for providing strategic recommendations and setting up programmatic campaigns in various DSPs in accordance with the client’s needs and expectations. You are accountable for executing & maintaining oversight on all aspects of programmatic campaign management processes – from campaign strategy, audience list setup, tagging recommendations & implementation, to campaign setup in DSP consoles, delivery management (pacing/budget/spend), and insights analysis, as well as billing reconciliation.

• Knowledgeable, keep track of, and actively share experience on programmatic media buying (both proven & emerging channels), optimization strategies, troubleshooting guides, brand safety practices.
• Be accountable for your own campaigns within the assigned Line of Businesses, while also assisting junior team members on tasks such as managing and communicating frequently with internal & external stakeholders to ensure they are kept up to date on the progress of tasks and campaign results.
• Develop audience targeting, data approach, inventory strategy, tactical recommendations, and budget allocation as parts of delivering data-informed & logically-sound proposals.
• Ensure that programmatic proposals and any improvements/changes to campaigns align to and deliver a consistent brand & positive user ad experience where possible.
• Fully understand & can articulate rationales behind your recommendations to all parties involved throughout the campaign lifecycle.
• Proactively ensure that governance practices are followed when executing digital media buys and provide full transparency into buy decisions.
• Setup, monitor, and regularly optimize campaigns as per best practices, while managing pacing, performance, and quality to achieve campaign objectives.
• Generate & analyze reports not only from DSPs but also technology platforms to ensure visibility into where ads are appearing and implement automated reports that track campaign performance and support the development of new metrics.
• Perform campaign analysis by turning large amounts of segmentation data into actionable insights to assist with KPI setting and campaign benchmarks, optimizing and providing budget re-allocation guidance.
• Offer insights on how to improve campaign effectiveness through deep use of data and platform functionality.
• Ensure that data sources (e.g. remarketing lists, 1st party data) and technologies (custom bidding) connect properly and perform maintenance on these integrations when needed.
• Ensure that data management and sharing conform to privacy and security requirements.
• Troubleshoot & involve relevant stakeholders to resolve campaign issues in a timely manner.
• Ensure full delivery of campaigns with performance that meets or exceeds client’s goals.
• Manage & maintain a direct relationship with key digital partners, DSP/SSP/DMP/technology providers – stay up to date on current offerings & work closely with partners to ensure pacing & performance are as expected, any algorithm changes that could impact campaign outputs, as well as to understand new opportunities/features & limitations of implementation.

Secondary Responsibilities

• Actively assist the Associate Director, Digital Activation in identifying knowledge gaps among programmatic campaign managers and drive initiatives/trainings to address them.
• Recognize process inefficiencies & pressure points and propose solutions/procedures in collaboration with internal and external parties.
• Help build, maintain, and update best practice documentation for multiple DSPs, data/technology platforms regarding campaign setup, supply strategy, etc.
• Maintain up-to-date knowledge and assist in the implementation of brand safety and suitability guidelines mitigating unfavourable adjacencies for the brand.
• Ensure the use of a multi-layered approach to monitoring and safeguarding data to reduce the risk of unauthorized access, use or disclosure of data. Follow & ensure the team follows incident protocols in the event of a data breach.
• Shape & drive assigned tasks/projects to completion.

Qualifications

• Mid to intermediate experience in programmatic media management with a leading advertising agency, publisher, advertising exchange or optimization firm.
• Knowledge of digital buying best practices, digital marketing and strong familiarity with self-serve buying platforms (e.g., DV360, Xandr, The Trade Desk, Amazon Ads, Yahoo DSP) would give leverage to this application.
• Exceptionally meticulous, detail-oriented, and organized self-starter.
• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively, execute quickly and proactively for campaign success in a deadline-driven environment.
• Office suite fluency, including MS Excel pivot tables, SharePoint, Google Sheets.
• Communication skills (verbal & written); ability to provide concise, clear reporting & actionable analysis.
• Excellent quantitative and analytical skills with the ability to draw conclusions based on data.
• Proven ability to self-check work to ensure results are error-free.
• Ability to plan, organize and work on multiple tasks simultaneously.
• Curious and passionate for continuous development with a keenness to learn new platforms and technology.