Manager, Audience Strategy & Operations – UB Media

Location: Remote
Duration: 5 Months

Position Overview

We are seeking a Manager, Audience Strategy & Operations to lead audience strategy, targeting, activation, and operational execution.

This role will serve as a subject matter expert in audience targeting and activation, helping translate advertiser goals into effective audience strategies using first-party data and available activation capabilities.

The Manager will collaborate closely with Sales, Account Management, Audience Product, Data, Reporting & Measurement, Marketing Technology, external agencies, and publisher partners to ensure audiences are strategically relevant, operationally scalable, and activated accurately and on time.

Key Responsibilities

Audience Strategy & Client Advisory

• Develop audience targeting strategies based on advertiser objectives and campaign goals.
• Partner with Sales and Account Management teams on audience recommendations and campaign planning.
• Advise stakeholders on audience capabilities, requirements, limitations, and activation considerations.
• Develop audience targeting best practices across campaign objectives, audience types, categories, and channels.
• Identify opportunities to improve audience relevance, precision, scale, and usability.

Audience Operations & Activation

• Own the end-to-end audience workflow, from request through development, distribution, activation, maintenance, and retirement.
• Manage day-to-day audience operations with agencies and technology partners.
• Establish workflows, ownership, timelines, and escalation processes.
• Identify operational challenges and develop solutions to improve efficiency and speed to activation.
• Maintain audience naming conventions, documentation, governance, and operational standards.
• Monitor audience distribution and activation readiness across publisher platforms.
• Identify and retire outdated, duplicate, or unnecessary audiences.
• Serve as an escalation point for complex audience activation issues.

Audience Product & Capability Development

• Evaluate current audience capabilities and identify gaps and opportunities.
• Partner with Product, Data, and Marketing Technology teams to improve audience products and activation capabilities.
• Translate business and client needs into audience capability requirements.
• Evaluate emerging audience technologies, data sources, and activation solutions.
• Help develop audience taxonomy, segmentation, distribution, and activation strategies.
• Contribute to the roadmap for future audience capabilities.

Audience Performance & Insights

• Evaluate audience-level campaign performance and identify trends and opportunities.
• Partner with Reporting & Measurement teams to connect audience strategy with campaign results.
• Identify audience fatigue, inefficiencies, and optimization opportunities.
• Develop repeatable frameworks for evaluating audience effectiveness.
• Document audience best practices and campaign learnings.
• Provide audience insights to internal stakeholders and support client-facing presentations when appropriate.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner with Sales, Account Management, Product, Reporting & Measurement, Media, and Activation teams.
• Coordinate with external agency, technology, and publisher partners.
• Lead cross-functional projects related to audience operations and process improvement.
• Help resolve complex operational and audience-related issues.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree preferred.
• 5+ years of experience in retail media, digital advertising, audience strategy, media activation, AdTech, data strategy, or a related field.
• Experience developing audience strategies using first-party data.
• Strong understanding of:
  • Audience segmentation
  • Audience targeting
  • Identity
  • Audience activation
  • Audience syndication
  • Digital media ecosystems
• Experience with audience management platforms, identity providers, or AdTech/MarTech solutions.
• Experience managing agency, technology, publisher, or other external partners.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Strong project and operational management skills.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Ability to explain technical or data concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong proficiency with Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.