Senior Director, Digital Advertising

Role Details

Company: Walden Media Group (WMG®)
Location: On site in downtown Austin, TX (WFH Wednesdays)
Department: Paid Media / Advertising
Reports to: Executive Director of Operations
Experience: 10 to 15+ years preferred

About Walden Media Group

Walden Media Group (WMG®) is a growth marketing agency headquartered in Austin, Texas. We specialize in growth retainers that combine brand, advertising, technology, and go to market services for businesses around the world.

WMG® operates two business lines. Our enterprise practice partners with established brands on integrated growth programs. Our franchise program is a low cost SaaS offering that gives individual franchisees lead management, reporting, and local advertising for their small business, across franchise brands in categories from health and wellness to beauty to fitness.

About the Role

Walden Media Group is seeking an experienced, technically sophisticated Senior Director, Digital Advertising to lead, optimize, and scale our paid advertising department.

This is a senior leadership role built on four core responsibilities: managing people, managing client relationships, building and presenting advertising strategy, and owning the results. The Senior Director is accountable for the success of every campaign in the department, along with the reporting, presentations, and client pitches that support them.

The ideal candidate is both a strategist and an operator. You will delegate work effectively, hold your team accountable to clear standards, lead meetings with confidence, and communicate persuasively with clients and internal stakeholders. You will also bring deep expertise in Google Ads and Meta Ads, along with the technical skill to ensure every lead is accurately tracked and attributed.

WMG® serves both enterprise organizations and multilocation franchise clients. We operate a proprietary client facing marketing dashboard built on GoHighLevel that provides visibility into leads generated through our advertising campaigns. Attribution and tracking are central to this role: we need a leader who understands not only how to generate leads, but how to ensure those leads are accurately captured, attributed, reported, and translated into meaningful business outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of paid media specialists and advertising professionals.
• Delegate workflow strategically, assigning the right work to the right people with clear ownership, deadlines, and expectations.
• Hold team members accountable for quality, timeliness, and performance, addressing gaps directly and constructively.
• Establish clear roles, responsibilities, and performance expectations across the department.
• Manage team priorities, workload distribution, and resource allocation so no account or deliverable falls through the cracks.
• Run regular team meetings, one on ones, and campaign reviews to keep work on track and surface issues early.
• Provide technical coaching, ongoing feedback, and professional development opportunities.
• Identify staffing needs, skills gaps, and opportunities to improve team efficiency.
• Build a culture of ownership, proactive communication, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.
• Own senior client relationships for paid media, serving as a trusted advisor and the primary voice of advertising strategy.
• Build and present advertising strategies to clients and stakeholders, clearly connecting recommendations to business goals.
• Lead client meetings, performance reviews, quarterly business reviews, and strategic planning sessions.
• Communicate persuasively and with confidence, earning client buy in on budgets, strategy shifts, and new initiatives.
• Partner with leadership and business development on new business pitches, building and presenting the paid media portion of proposals.
• Identify opportunities to expand client relationships and grow account scope.
• Manage client expectations, resolve concerns, and handle escalations with professionalism and urgency.
• Partner with Account Management to keep communication consistent and clients informed.
• Own the success of paid media campaigns across Google Ads, Meta Ads, and other relevant advertising platforms.
• Be accountable for campaign outcomes, including lead volume, lead quality, cost per lead, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, and return on ad spend.
• Develop and oversee full funnel advertising strategies focused on lead generation, customer acquisition, and measurable return on advertising investment.
• Lead campaign planning, audience targeting, budget allocation, bidding strategies, creative testing, optimization, and performance analysis.
• Establish clear performance benchmarks and KPIs for every account and ensure the team delivers against them.
• Conduct regular audits of advertising accounts to identify performance opportunities, inefficiencies, and technical issues.
• Develop scalable advertising strategies for enterprise clients and multilocation franchise organizations.
• Remain hands on with campaign platforms, providing direct technical expertise on complex or high priority accounts.
• Own attribution and tracking across the department as a core accountability of the role.
• Ensure every campaign has accurate conversion tracking, lead source attribution, and reporting from first click to closed lead.
• Oversee the accuracy and reliability of lead tracking and attribution within our GoHighLevel SaaS dashboard.
• Ensure proper implementation and maintenance of Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel, Conversions API, offline conversion tracking, and related technologies.
• Develop and enforce standards for campaign tracking, UTM parameters, naming conventions, lead source attribution, and reporting consistency.
• Troubleshoot discrepancies between advertising platform reporting, captured leads, CRM records, and client dashboards.
• Partner with internal technical resources and external vendors to diagnose and resolve integration, automation, and data quality issues.
• Recommend improvements to marketing technology, automation, reporting infrastructure, and system scalability.
• Own the accuracy, quality, and timeliness of all paid media reporting delivered to clients.
• Translate complex campaign data into clear insights, recommendations, and compelling presentations, and present results to clients and internal leadership.
• Establish and maintain department wide standard operating procedures, campaign checklists, quality assurance processes, and documentation.
• Implement consistent workflows for campaign onboarding, setup, launch, optimization, reporting, and offboarding.
• Coordinate with Operations and Account Management to maintain accurate priorities, deadlines, and task ownership within Wrike.
• Identify opportunities for automation, standardization, and process improvement, and support resource planning, time tracking, team utilization, and profitable service delivery.
• Serve as the senior paid media subject matter expert for internal teams and strategic client engagements, and collaborate with Creative, Design, Video Production, and Marketing Communications to align campaign objectives, messaging, and creative assets.
• Ensure paid media deliverables meet WMG® standards for quality, accuracy, timeliness, and client experience.

Required Qualifications

• 10 to 15+ years of professional experience in digital marketing, with significant expertise in paid media and performance marketing.
• At least 5 years of experience leading and managing paid media teams, including delegating work and holding team members accountable.
• Proven experience managing senior client relationships and leading client meetings, presentations, and strategy reviews.
• Strong presentation and persuasive communication skills, with the ability to win client and stakeholder buy in.
• Experience building and presenting advertising strategies and contributing to new business pitches.
• Expert level hands on experience with Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager.
• Deep understanding of conversion tracking, attribution, and performance analytics.
• Working knowledge of Google Tag Manager, GA4, Meta Conversions API, webhooks, APIs, and CRM automation.
• Demonstrated success managing multiple advertising accounts, ideally within a marketing agency or similarly fast paced client services environment.
• Strong technical troubleshooting skills across advertising platforms, analytics tools, CRM systems, and lead capture integrations.
• Proven ability to develop operational processes, establish quality standards, and improve team accountability.
• Experience managing advertising budgets and making data driven optimization decisions.
• Excellent organizational, prioritization, and cross functional leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience administering or integrating GoHighLevel.
• Experience with multilocation franchises, distributed businesses, or high volume lead generation campaigns.
• Experience building attribution models or tracking infrastructure across multiple clients.
• Experience integrating paid advertising with marketing automation platforms and client reporting dashboards.
• Familiarity with Wrike or comparable project management software.
• Experience improving operational efficiency, resource utilization, and profitability within an agency.
• Experience building or restructuring paid media teams during periods of rapid organizational growth.

The Ideal Candidate

You are an experienced paid media leader who thrives on building high performing teams, leading client relationships, and owning results. You know how to delegate, set clear expectations, and hold people accountable while helping them grow. You are just as comfortable leading a client meeting or pitching a new strategy as you are digging into an ad account or a tracking issue.

You know Google Ads and Meta Ads at an expert level, and you understand that exceptional results depend on accurate attribution, reliable data, strong processes, and clear ownership. You communicate with confidence and clarity, and you can persuade clients and stakeholders by connecting strategy to business outcomes.

Most importantly, you take full accountability for the success of your campaigns, your reporting, and your team, and you bring the leadership and operational discipline needed to transform a growing paid media department into a scalable, high performing function.

Pay and Benefits

Pay: $100,000 to $120,000 per year, based on experience
Benefits: Health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance and paid time off
Work location: In person, 720 Brazos Street, Austin, TX 78701