Lead Programmatic Media Buyer (P3545)

Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) powered by 84.51°, is a leading retail media advertising solution. KPM closes the loop between media exposure and store sales by using first-party purchase data to make brand advertising more addressable, actionable, and accountable. Launched almost three years ago, we have activated campaigns for over 1000 brands. Our vision is to become the preferred media company for advertisers by creating a more accountable media supply chain that increases the effectiveness of investment dollars. We are a growing team of passionate and talented analysts, data scientists, marketing consultants, and media strategists who are committed to transforming the media industry.

As a Lead, Programmatic Media Buyer, you will lead our programmatic buyers in developing programmatic strategy, and buying optimizations with the goal of achieving, and in many cases, exceeding client objectives.  This role drives innovation at both the strategic and campaign executional level, building relationships with your team, clients, and partners to set expectations on strategy and performance. The ideal candidate has a strong programmatic digital planning and buying background with experience being hands on keyboard in programmatic ad technology platforms. They will also be comfortable leading overarching tactical activation strategies for programmatic. Ideally this candidate would also have experience overseeing and mentoring junior level buyers and leading clients in the programmatic space. In this role, you will work closely with the Programmatic Product Strategy & Innovation Lead helping to develop new media products for Kroger Precision Marketing’s Programmatic and Direct Connect/Self-Serve offering. They will need to be capable of taking those new offerings and ensuring KPM is able to flawlessly execute and achieve clients’ desired performance objectives.

Business Performance

• Media delivery & reporting on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis
• Lead monthly campaign performance meeting with media buyers to uncover process inefficiencies, wins, areas of improvement, etc.
• Communicating overall health of accounts and projects to senior leadership on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis
• Track performance to goals and benchmarks as well as provide recommendations & opportunities for improvement

Media Strategy & Innovation

• Proactively explore and source potential opportunities with new major media platforms to innovate, build brand awareness and drive acquisition
• Work closely with product, marketing, & sales to develop and manage GTM products & platforms
• Assist media buyers in developing media strategies and programs with internal and external teams for media and brand campaigns
• Consider competitive landscape, consumer behavior and current trends to conduct quantitative / qualitative analysis and ensure we are pursuing the right opportunities for offsite media

Team Management

• Ensuring media buyers are launching campaigns on time & accurately
• Managing campaign/account assignments and capacity tracking
• Weekly 1:1s with direct reports to uncover struggles, areas of growth, & continued development of media buying team
• Assisting media buyers with day-to-day struggles, questions, and concerns
• Lead weekly meetings with the media team, providing updates on status of business, social & programmatic environment, & broader team
• Lead talent processes, performance review, and compensation processes for direct reports
• New hire training & development

RESPONSIBILITIES: 

• Programmatic media expert with ability to ensure we are utilizing tools to our fullest capacity and making recommendations when new tools/platforms are needed.
• Responsible for developing programmatic media best practices, channel learnings, benchmarks, and case studies for the KPM portfolio.
• Client facing to report on KPM’s campaign strategy, performance, and key recommendations for future campaigns.
• Oversight of campaign buyers keeping a pulse on performance and delivery. Ensuring KPIs are met and recommendations are made to enhance performance as needed.
• In charge of holistic programmatic campaign performance inclusive of oversight in reporting from weekly pacing to final media metrics wrap report. In particular, occasionally joining sales and account management roles on client calls to tell an impactful media and measurement story through campaign performance.
• Liaison between multiple teams advocating campaign performance, ways of working, and troubleshooting between sales team, campaign operations, buyers, traffickers, and analysts.
• Internal and external voice for programmatic campaign performance and strategy.
• Active voice in upskilling/training the KPM organization on programmatic media.
• Subject matter expert for our core solutions both internally and externally – continually evaluating the industry landscape, staying current on competitive research and providing industry updates to the organization.
• Works hand-in-hand with the product & engineering organization to ensure channel strategy is met, aid in new product launches, and ensure flawless execution of campaigns.
• Create strong relationships with vendor partners and stay current on relevant, upcoming offerings.

QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

The right person will thrive in a fast-paced environment and must possess the following:

• Bachelor’s degree in advertising, marketing, related field or the equivalent combination of education and experience
• 4-5 years of programmatic media experience working in an agency or publisher setting
• Knowledge of key DSPs inclusive of Google, TheTradeDesk, Adobe, MediaMath, DataXu and more
• Knowledge of key programmatic exchange platforms & operational elements
• Experience in buying all channels programmatically from display, search, social, audio, and video.
• Familiarity with media buying platforms, ideally Media Ocean and Prisma.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Excellent verbal, written, presentation, people, and diplomacy skills are required
• Initiative, detail orientation, strong analytical and decision-making skills
• Ability to work in a collaborative environment
• Ability to manage multiple projects, work under pressure, and adapt to sudden changes in the work environment
• Able to build relationships across the team, department, vendors and clients
• Proactive approach, demonstrated by:
• Providing regular project timeline and budget updates to team/supervisor
• Anticipating potential problems and obstacles to project success, communicating concerns and potential solutions with team
• Able to review results and performance of paid media campaigns based on predetermined success indicators, determine effectiveness and report back to client

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