Director, Digital Activation

Agency:

Hearts & Science

Job Function:

Media

Job Subfunction:

Media Planning and Buying

Job Description:

Position Overview

The Director, Digital Activation is the senior activation leader for assigned clients and brands, accountable for translating business and media strategy into an integrated digital activation vision. The role owns activation strategy, operating standards, investment stewardship, and executive-level client counsel across channels, ensuring campaigns are executed, optimized, measured, billed, and reconciled with consistency and rigor.

Working closely with the Senior Director, the Director helps set the strategic and operational agenda for the activation function, serves as a senior client partner and escalation point, and ensures the Digital Activation Process and departmental standards are appropriately tailored, governed, and consistently applied across the portfolio. This role leads managers and multidisciplinary teams, shapes organizational capability, anticipates risk, and develops scalable solutions that create value for clients and the agency.

Key Responsibilities

Executive Client Leadership and Strategy

·    Own senior client relationships. Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, shape the activation agenda, and serve as the senior relationship owner for digital activation.

·    Connect activation to business outcomes. Develop strategic frameworks and multi-channel activation roadmaps that align investment, audiences, platforms, data, creative inputs, and measurement to client goals.

·    Lead executive communications. Lead governance forums covering performance, investment, optimization, measurement, risks, innovation, and forward priorities.

·    Provide proactive counsel. Anticipate opportunities and challenges, translate complex developments into business implications, and bring decisive recommendations forward.

·    Drive growth and solution development. Cultivate new relationships, partnerships, and scalable activation solutions that address business needs and strengthen account growth.

Activation, Investment, and Operational Governance

·    Set activation strategy and oversight. Establish the cross-channel activation approach and hold teams accountable for planning, setup, launch, stewardship, optimization, and closeout quality.

·    Govern buying-path decisions. Direct decisions across manual and programmatic buying, platform selection, supply, data, success requirements, and demand-side platform use.

·    Own portfolio performance. Maintain senior accountability for campaign quality, pacing, delivery, and outcomes, ensuring risks are identified early and resolved decisively.

·    Govern campaign investment. Establish investment guardrails and oversee budgets, allocations, pacing, changes, financial controls, billing, and reconciliation.

·    Lead complex escalation. Provide advanced direction on setup, troubleshooting, optimization, platform nuances, partner issues, and delivery challenges.

·    Establish operating governance. Define decision rights, review cadences, quality standards, documentation requirements, escalation paths, and accountability across teams and partners.

Technology, Data, Measurement, and Innovation

·    Lead platform and ad technology strategy. Apply deep knowledge of programmatic and ad technology platforms such as The Trade Desk, DV360, Amazon DSP, CM360, and comparable tools.

·    Own reporting and measurement quality. Ensure data integrity and lead the design of dashboards, executive narratives, measurement approaches, and actionable performance recommendations.

·    Advance capabilities. Guide adoption of business intelligence tools, supply and data sources, workflow improvements, verification solutions, and emerging measurement techniques.

·    Develop data-driven solutions. Use large data sets and sound methodologies to identify insights, diagnose performance, and develop scalable data management and reporting approaches.

·    Evaluate partners. Approve vendor selections and scopes, assess capabilities through RFIs and demonstrations, and ensure partner performance and accountability.

·    Scale best practices. Turn account learning into frameworks, playbooks, training, and solutions that improve activation quality and efficiency across the organization.

People Leadership and Organizational Capability

·    Lead managers and build capability. Directly lead managers and activation professionals with accountability for performance, succession planning, coaching, development, feedback, and career growth.

·    Set the leadership standard. Build a culture of accountability, curiosity, inclusive leadership, collaboration, continuous learning, and application of insights.

·    Govern portfolio operations. Establish priorities, review standards, escalation paths, and capacity plans while empowering managers to lead day-to-day delivery.

·    Shape staffing and resources. Adapt team structures, workflows, and deployment to meet changing client needs, strengthen coverage, and address operational challenges.

·    Collaborate across functions. Influence agency leaders and partner with planning, investment, analytics, creative, operations, finance, and centers of excellence.

·    Manage portfolio risk. Anticipate delivery, platform, partner, financial, and operational risks and ensure appropriate mitigation, escalation, and resolution.

Required Qualifications

·    Experience. 8+ years in digital media planning, buying, activation, or investment, with progressive leadership responsibility, expert digital buying knowledge, and deep programmatic expertise.

·    People leadership. Demonstrated experience leading managers and multidisciplinary media teams, including performance management, succession planning, coaching, and organizational development.

·    Client leadership. Proven success owning senior client relationships, influencing executive stakeholders, and guiding high-impact activation and investment decisions.

·    Activation expertise. Strong knowledge of campaign design, buying paths, optimization, pacing, performance management, measurement, billing, and reconciliation.

·    Technology fluency. Advanced knowledge of DSP and ad technology solutions such as The Trade Desk, DV360, Amazon DSP, CM360, or similar platforms, plus workflow tools such as Prisma.

·    Measurement and data. Strong analytical skills, experience with large data sets, and knowledge of third-party verification and brand-safety tools such as IAS.

·    Communication. Excellent executive communication and presentation skills, including the ability to translate complexity into clear business decisions.

·    Business development. Demonstrated ability to develop relationships, partnerships, and client solutions using new or existing capabilities and processes.

·    Operational leadership. Proven ability to prioritize competing demands, lead through ambiguity, manage risk, and influence cross-functional teams.

·    Technical productivity. Advanced Microsoft Excel skills and the ability to improve team efficiency through better tools, workflows, and coaching.

Preferred Qualifications

·    Cross-channel leadership. Experience leading activation across multiple digital channels and integrating programmatic expertise into broader media strategies. Willingness to learn and oversee Social & Search channels.

·    Executive reporting. Experience designing dashboards, creating executive-ready performance narratives, and developing long-term data or measurement solutions.

·    Partner evaluation. Experience evaluating media, technology, data, and measurement partners through RFIs, demonstrations, scopes, and capability assessments.

·    Problem solving. A record of anticipating and defining complex problems, weighing alternatives, and implementing practical, scalable solutions.

·    Organizational influence. Demonstrated effectiveness leading up, down, and laterally across varied working styles and senior stakeholder groups.

Success in This Role

·    Trusted leadership. Clients view the Director as a proactive, accountable senior adviser who shapes the activation agenda and advances business priorities.

·    Portfolio performance. Campaigns launch accurately, pace appropriately, and are continuously optimized against defined objectives within a strong governance framework.

·    Operational excellence. Activation standards, quality controls, reporting, billing, reconciliation, and risk management are consistently applied.

·    Talent growth. Managers and teams receive clear direction, coaching, feedback, and opportunities to expand strategic, technical, and leadership capabilities.

·    Scalable impact. New relationships, solutions, and repeatable practices create measurable value for clients and strengthen Hearts United capabilities.

·    Integrated partnership. Cross-functional teams experience clear decision-making, strong coordination, and effective issue resolution.





 $90,000 - $215,000

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