Director of Product Management – Media & Creative Activation

Who we are:

We create data products and technology that make advertising work better for people.

WPP Open is WPP’s intelligent marketing operating system, fuelling growth for the world’s most admired brands. Purpose-built for an era that demands a modern approach to data management, usage, and brand growth, we deliver modular products and interconnected capabilities across the marketing lifecycle.

Operating globally across WPP, we empower marketers and agencies to drive sustainable, data-enabled growth through connected technology and intelligent automation.

Who we are looking for:

As Director of Product Management – Media & Creative Activation & Optimization, you will lead a core capability area within Unified Activation in WPP Open, focused on executing and optimizing media and creative performance at scale.

This is a genuine product-building role. You will take activation and optimization problems from concept and rapid prototype through production, go-to-market, adoption, and measurable operational impact. You will have significant autonomy to shape product vision, roadmap, and priorities, working at pace to turn complex activation challenges into scalable, automated products.

This is a senior IC product leadership role. You own a capability area end-to-end — setting direction, managing the roadmap, and driving delivery across multidisciplinary teams spanning Product Ownership, Engineering, Data Science, Support, and Enablement.

You own campaign optimization across media and creative — from structured optimization (budget, bidding, targeting, DCO, in-flight creative performance across walled gardens and open platforms) to unstructured, agent-driven troubleshooting and optimization workflows. You also own the cross-product governance layer that keeps activation consistent from intake through live execution.

Unified Activation connects creative production, pre-launch quality assurance, campaign setup and activation, and cross-platform monitoring and optimization into one workspace from creative handoff to live campaign execution, with full governance and traceability across platforms.

Unified Activation Capabilities

This capability area spans the full path from creative handoff to live, optimized delivery covering creative readiness, campaign activation, campaign optimization for media and creative, and the governance that keeps work consistent across platforms.

Creative management. Creativebriefs, schedules, and variants become activation-ready requirements. Assets are organized with quality metadata and status visibility. AI-assisted checks catch format, duration, safe-zone, and related issues before launch, while performance insights and quality signals inform creative decisions. The outcome is faster, more reliable creative handoff.

Campaign activation. Media plans become structured, launch-ready campaigns targeting, budgets, bidding, and naming rules included. Approved creative reaches buying environments with automated tagging, mapping, and pre-launch integrity checks. The outcome is scalable, faster activation with fewer broken paths.

Campaign optimization. Spanning media and creative. Algorithmic optimization uses ML models to optimize budgets, bids, and targeting parameters for cross-platform uplift while campaigns are live. Monitoring covers portfolio-level campaign health, delivery pacing, and KPI performance across platforms. Agentic optimization handles unstructured troubleshooting and optimization turning delivery signals into recommendations and governed actions when problems are open-ended rather than rule-bound. Dynamic Creative Optimization sits within this same area, measuring and improving how creative performs once live across walled gardens, buying platforms, ad servers, and other activation environments.

Cross-module governance. Shared taxonomies, advertiser and platform best-practice guardrails across intake, activation, and in-flight execution. Governed connectivity into major ad platforms using so access stays persistent, auditable, and free of direct token exposure.

What you'll be doing:

• Own the product vision, strategy, and execution roadmap for Optimization & Governance within the Unified Activation platform in WPP Open.
• Own campaign optimization across media and creative algorithmic ML optimization of budgets, bids, and targeting; portfolio-level monitoring of campaign health, delivery, and KPI performance; and agentic optimization for unstructured troubleshooting and open-ended performance improvement.
• Own Dynamic Creative Optimization measuring, governing, and improving creative performance while campaigns are live across walled gardens, buying platforms, ad servers, and other activation environments.
• Own governance for the capability area taxonomies, advertiser compliance rules, and best-practice guardrails across creative and media activation workflows, including in-flight execution.
• Define and deliver agentic activation and optimization workflows that automate creative distribution, dynamic taxonomy generation & platform guardrails.
• Partner with Product Ownership, Engineering, Architecture, Data Science, and other cross-functional teams to deliver scalable, resilient integrations across major media buying platforms, ad servers, and WPP Open services.
• Translate complex business problems from WPP agencies and global brand clients into concrete product requirements, functional specifications, and prioritized backlogs.
• Own direction and priorities across multidisciplinary delivery teams spanning Product Ownership, Engineering, Data Science, Support, and Enablement.
• Manage dependency and cross-functional alignment across WPP Open platform teams, ensuring cohesive delivery across governance, integration services, and shared data layers.
• Partner with Support and Enablement teams to ensure capabilities are successfully launched, adopted, and embedded into agency workflows.
• Establish clear success metrics, tracking product adoption, workflow time savings, error reduction, zero tracker leakage outcomes, and client performance / KPI-driven uplift across global markets.

What you'll need:

Essential

• Deep expertise in at least one activation domain such as campaign activation, creative management, trafficking, optimization, or governance with the ability and appetite to broaden across the wider suite.
• Evidence of building and operationalizing automation or product capabilities that solve real workflow or activation problems.
• Evidence of taking solutions beyond concept or requirements into practical use, including driving adoption or measurable workflow improvement.
• Hands-on experience using agentic and AI-assisted tools to prototype product concepts, explore technical systems, accelerate documentation, and communicate ideas.
• Ability to lead multidisciplinary teams spanning Product Ownership, Engineering, Data Science, Support, and Enablement through influence rather than formal reporting lines.
• Strong stakeholder-management and communication skills, with the ability to translate complex agency and client problems into clear product priorities.
• Sufficient technical fluency to work effectively with engineering, architecture, and data teams and make informed product decisions.

Preferred

• Formal product-management experience at Senior Product Manager or Director level.
• Experience owning or delivering enterprise SaaS, AdTech, or MarTech products.
• Experience managing or leading delivery across Engineering and Data Science teams.
• Broader activation knowledge across creative, media, trafficking, governance, and campaign optimization including in-flight structured optimization, agentic troubleshooting, and dynamic / creative optimization workflows.
• Experience with major advertising and activation platforms such as Google Ads, DV360, CM360, Meta, Amazon Ads, The Trade Desk, and relevant third-party activation technology (e.g. Grasp, Smartly, Concord, SKAI).
• Experience developing ML/AI-driven optimization products, automated decision systems, or agentic workflows.
• Technical experience with API-led integrations, relational data models, and SQL.
• Experience working within agile product-delivery environments and frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban, or Shape Up.
• Day-to-day fluency with modern AI-assisted product workflows (e.g. rapid prototyping, codebase exploration, automated documentation).

Success Attributes

• Strategic thinker: Capable of decomposing complex, fragmented media operations into unified, automated software products.
• Builder mindset: Comfortable moving quickly from problem definition to prototype, production and adoption rather than stopping at strategy or requirements.
• High autonomy: Able to establish direction, make informed product decisions and run with an area of ownership without requiring close management.
• High ownership: Demonstrates resilience and operational discipline in managing cross-functional initiatives under shifting technical landscapes.
• Natural collaborator: Builds strong partnerships across technical teams, agency practitioners, and executive leadership.
• Curious and adaptable: Able to develop knowledge across the wider activation ecosystem as products, channels and technologies evolve.

Who you are:

You're open: We are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are open-minded: to new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.

You're optimistic: We believe in the power of creativity, technology and talent to create brighter futures or our people, our clients and our communities. We approach all that we do with conviction: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.

You're extraordinary: we are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we provide extraordinary every day.

What we'll give you:

Passionate, inspired people – We aim to create a culture in which people can do extraordinary work.

Scale and opportunity – We offer the opportunity to create, influence and complete projects at a scale that is unparalleled in the industry.

Challenging and stimulating work – Unique work and the opportunity to join a group of creative problem solvers. Are you up for the challenge?

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