Senior Director, Paid Marketing (Remote)

U.S. News & World Report is a multifaceted digital media company dedicated to helping citizens, consumers, business leaders and policy officials make important decisions in their lives. We publish independent reporting, rankings, data journalism and advice that has earned the trust of our readers and users for 90 years. Our platforms on usnews.com include Education, Health, Money, Travel, Cars, News, Real Estate, Careers and 360 Reviews.

We reach millions of people monthly during moments when they are most in need of expert advice and motivated to act on that advice directly on our platforms. Our signature franchises include our “Best” series of consumer guides on colleges, graduate schools, hospitals, diets, cars, financial services and more. These guides provide an easy-to-digest list for consumers to better understand and compare when making their decisions. We continue to publish annual guides of the authoritative Best Colleges and Best Hospitals rankings on our website and in print. And our U.S. News Live flagship conferences highlight important national conversations such as Healthcare of Tomorrow .

We believe in having a broad range of talent and backgrounds at U.S. News. We strive to maintain a welcoming and inclusive workplace where everyone is given an opportunity to succeed and contribute to their fullest.

Your role in helping us shape the future:

We're hiring a Senior Director of Paid Marketing to lead the strategy, execution, and optimization of our performance marketing engine across paid search (SEM) and paid social. This is a senior leadership role for someone who blends sharp strategic thinking with deep operational rigor — and who is energized by using data, automation, and cross-functional collaboration to drive efficient, scalable growth.

You'll own a significant performance budget, set the vision for how we acquire customers through paid channels, and partner closely with Data Science, Engineering, Product, Design, Partnerships, and Legal to push the limits of what our paid program can do.

Are you up to the challenge?

Strategy & Leadership

• Define and own the multi-year vision and quarterly roadmap for paid search and paid social across all key platforms (Google, Bing, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc.)

• Set and manage budget allocation across channels, campaigns, and audiences to maximize ROI and align with broader business goals

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of channel managers, analysts, and specialists

Execution & Optimization

• Drive day-to-day campaign performance: creative testing, audience strategy, bid management, landing page experimentation, and budget pacing

• Build a culture of relentless testing — hypothesis-driven experimentation, clean read-outs, and rapid iteration

• Identify and deploy automation opportunities (smart bidding, dynamic creative, feed management, scripts/APIs) to scale efficiently

• analyze and build segmentations & audiences in and outside of the ad platforms to inform and make decisions on Revenue, Profit, and Quality of the leads.

• Lead building a lead scoring system to maximize Revenue, Profit, and Quality across campaigns. This includes leading cross sell strategy and utilizing multitouch and LTV models to the maximum potential

Data, Attribution & Measurement

• Implement and manage advanced attribution models to understand the full-funnel impact of performance spend

• Partner with Data Science to refine LTV/CAC calculations, build and maintain incrementality testing programs, and use deep-funnel signals to inform bidding strategies

• Develop the measurement framework that distinguishes incremental growth from harvested demand — and use it to make smart reinvestment decisions

• Own paid marketing reporting: dashboards, exec updates, and the narrative behind the numbers

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with Data Engineering to ensure clean, reliable data pipelines for attribution and optimization

• Work with Product Management to align acquisition funnels and product experiences to maximize conversion and yield

• Collaborate with Partnerships on co-marketing, pricing and platform-specific opportunities

• Work with design & brand partners to produce performance-grade assets at the volume modern platforms demand

• Engage Legal and Privacy on consent frameworks, compliance, ad policies & creative approval