[Hiring] Director of Paid Media @HMH

Role Description

The Director of Paid Media will own the paid content and media strategy, execution, and measurement across our portfolio of brands – with primary responsibility for using paid investment to support targeted accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) strategies that drive qualified demand, accelerate pipeline, and grow revenue. Reporting to the VP of Growth Marketing, the ideal candidate brings strong creative instincts for what makes advertising work, paired with the analytical rigor to optimize spend, media mix, and performance against clear business outcomes.

This individual will set the paid content strategy and performance-informed content direction, working within the brand guidelines and design system owned and maintained by the Design team. In partnership with Design, they will help optimize templates and formats for both production efficiency and ad performance. They will own the feedback loop between live performance data and the next round of creative and will use AI throughout: accelerating asset and variant production, sharpening audience and bid strategy, and analyzing creative performance at scale.

This role is grounded in data. We are looking for someone who reads performance trends across campaigns, channels, audiences, and creative assets, and reallocates budget toward what is working on a weekly cadence to improve return on ad spend.

This individual will collaborate closely with Demand Generation, Customer Marketing, Marketing Operations, Brand, Design, and Business Unit marketing partners, and manage one direct report, the Digital Marketing Manager (Paid Media).

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end media planning, sponsorships, placements, and ad buying across paid search, paid social, programmatic display, online video/CTV, retargeting, and third-party publisher and industry media.
• Translate business and funnel targets into channel, audience, placement, and budget plans that prioritize targeted accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) strategies for each brand.
• Own the paid content strategy and direct day-to-day ad production in support of the Digital Marketing Manager (Paid Media).
• Partner with Design to inform modular templates and format specifications that enable efficient production of high-quality variations.
• Build and run a hypothesis-driven creative testing roadmap.
• Review performance on a weekly cadence and optimize in-flight campaigns.
• Manage the paid media budget, prioritizing investment in targeted accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) programs.
• Own paid media measurement and reporting in partnership with Growth Marketing and Business Solutions partners.
• Apply AI across paid media strategy, creative production, optimization, and measurement.
• Serve as the primary day-to-day owner of the paid media agency relationship.
• Partner with various marketing leads to align paid media with targeted-account selection and audience segmentation.
• Ensure all paid creative adheres to brand, tone-of-voice, legal and claims-review, and accessibility standards.
• Manage, coach, and develop the Digital Marketing Manager (Paid Media).
• Monitor platform changes, competitor advertising, and the shift toward AI-driven discovery.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of marketing or advertising experience, including 5+ years focused on paid media.
• Demonstrated success shaping ad creative that performs and owning the channel performance and optimization.
• Hands-on depth in media planning, placement, and ad buying across major paid platforms.
• Experience owning annual paid media budgets of $1M+, ideally across multiple brands or business lines.
• Experience developing and executing paid media strategies for targeted-account and account-based marketing (ABM) programs.
• Strong analytical fluency – comfortable with GA4, B2B attribution models, incrementality testing, and BI/reporting tools.
• Demonstrated use of AI tools to improve paid media strategy, creative production, optimization, or measurement.
• Comfortable in AI-assisted content tools and design platforms.
• Proven experience managing an external media agency.
• Effective leadership and managerial skills, with experience developing direct reports.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and collaboration skills.
• Ability to operate in a complex, matrixed, multi-stakeholder environment.

Requirements

• 8+ years of marketing or advertising experience, including 5+ years focused on paid media, and experience managing or mentoring at least one direct report.
• Demonstrated success shaping ad creative that performs and owning the channel performance and optimization that follows.
• Hands-on depth in media planning, placement, and ad buying across major paid platforms.
• Experience owning annual paid media budgets of $1M+, ideally across multiple brands or business lines.
• Experience developing and executing paid media strategies for targeted-account and account-based marketing (ABM) programs.
• Strong analytical fluency.
• Demonstrated use of AI tools to improve paid media strategy.
• Proven experience managing an external media agency.
• Effective leadership and managerial skills.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and collaboration skills.

Benefits

• Salary Range: $110,000 - $145,000

Company Description

HMH is a learning technology company committed to delivering connected solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes. HMH serves more than 50 million students and 4 million educators in 150 countries.