Senior Manager, Paid Media

About the job

Senior Manager, Paid Media

Reports To: Chief Marketing Officer

In-Office Requirement: 4 days a week (Monday-Thursday, remote Friday)

Location: New York, New York (Soho Area)

Compensation: $100k - $155k annual salary

About the Role

The Senior Manager of Paid Media will sit at the intersection of brand building and business growth, owning paid media strategy and execution across upper-funnel channels and retailer media platforms including retailer.com , ensuring every media dollar drives measurable sales impact. This person will have holistic oversight of Bubble’s paid media budget, ensuring brand-building initiatives and conversion-driving media work together to build long-term brand equity while delivering near-term business results. You’ll partner closely with Brand Marketing, eCommerce, Sales, Creative and Community teams to create an integrated media strategy that builds awareness, drives consideration, and converts consumers at retail.

Retail media is a large portion of this role - spanning Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Ulta UB Media, Criteo, and Amazon ads - and the right candidate will bring hands-on experience activating and optimizing across media networks.

This role marks Bubble’s deliberate move to bring strategy, execution, and accountability closer to the business.

Key Responsibilities

What You’ll Do – Full Funnel Oversight

• Develop and execute an integrated paid media strategy across upper-funnel brand media, social, digital, and retailer media.

• Own holistic paid media budget management, balancing investment between brand equity-building and performance-driving channels.

• Manage and optimize media across Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Ulta.com, DTC and other retailer.com platforms. Partner with the Director of Amazon to deliver topline Amazon paid strategy, work with Amazon agency on execution and KPI delivery.

• Develop retailer media strategies that amplify and extend Bubble’s broader brand campaigns, launches and cultural moments.

• Partner with Brand Marketing to ensure paid media builds awareness among our core audience, relevance and consideration, while creating a clear path to conversion.

• Partner with eCommerce and Sales to align retailer media with retailer priorities, promotional calendars, launches, inventory and business goals.

• Identify opportunities where brand media can halo and drive retailer performance, and where retailer media can extend brand campaigns further down the funnel.

• Manage campaign budgets, pacing, forecasting and optimization across the full paid media ecosystem.

• Develop reporting and measurement frameworks across brand and performance KPIs, including reach, engagement, traffic, conversion, ROAS, new customer acquisition and sales.

• Analyze consumer, competitive, category. channel  and culture trends to identify opportunities for growth and market disruption.

• Collaborate with Creative and Brand Marketing to develop platform-native content and advertising that works across both brand and performance environments.

• Lead ongoing testing of audiences, creative, messaging, placements, keywords and investment levels to continuously improve performance.

• Provide clear insights and recommendations to leadership on how media investment is building both Bubble’s brand and the business.

Retail Media Networks

• Lead strategy and execution across Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Ulta UB Media, Criteo, and other RMNs - managing two distinct but connected workstreams: tent-pole campaign activations and always-on display and search.

• Always-on media - own the day-to-day management of retail.com display and sponsored search activity, including keyword bidding, bid optimization, audience targeting, and spend pacing. This is an active, hands-on workstream requiring regular monitoring and continuous efficiency improvements.

• Campaign activations - lead the planning and execution of larger, campaign-led retail media moments tied to product launches, promotional windows, and retailer joint business plans. Partner with retail account leads to ensure media activity is aligned to sell-in priorities and commercial objectives.

• Act as Bubble's lead point of contact with retailer media teams (including Roundel, UB Media, Walmart Connect), co-developing briefs, aligning on campaign priorities, and ensuring executional follow-through against agreed plans.

• Proactively identify and recommend budget reallocation opportunities across RMNs - flagging where spend is over or under-indexed relative to performance, and shifting investment toward the highest-efficiency channels and placements.

• Own RMN performance reporting - tracking spend, ROAS, and retail.com sales lift with clear visibility for internal stakeholders.

Amazon Ads

• Partner with the Director of Amazon to deliver topline Amazon paid strategy, work with Amazon agency on execution and KPI delivery. This role would partner with the Amazon team on briefing, overall spend and align on holistic goals.

DTC Paid Media

• Manage Bubble’s paid media mix for hellobubble.com across Meta, TikTok, Google Search, and YouTube - covering both prospecting and retargeting.

• Build and optimize campaigns that balance customer acquisition efficiency (ROAS, CAC) with brand awareness.

• Partner with the creative team to brief platform-specific content and run ongoing creative testing.

• Stay current on emerging ad formats and proactively test new opportunities.

Email & CRM Collaboration

• Partner with the Senior Director of Ecommerce on email and SMS strategy - sharing paid media insights to inform segmentation, offers, and creative testing.

• Ensure messaging consistency across paid and owned channels, particularly around launches and promotions.

Reporting, KPIs & Performance Accountability

• Build and own Bubble’s paid media reporting framework from the ground up - designing dashboards, cadences, and templates that give clear, consistent visibility across all channels, in conjunction with our agencies.

• Collaborate with digital, commercial leadership, and marketing to define KPIs that are meaningful, commercially grounded, and aligned to business priorities - then hold yourself accountable to them.

• Core metrics will span: awareness, reach, ROAS, CAC, retail.com sales lift, share of voice, attributed revenue, spend efficiency, and channel-level contribution - with the expectation that this candidate can contextualize performance, not just report it.

• Deliver regular performance reviews to senior stakeholders, translating data into clear narratives and actionable recommendations.

• Drive a test-and-learn culture - documenting what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s next, with structured frameworks for ongoing optimization.

• Align paid and organic search performance with the Commercial & Marketing Teams using paid search insights to inform broader SEO strategy.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with retail account leads, brand marketing, influencer marketing, ecommerce, and finance to ensure paid media is aligned to commercial priorities and budgets are deployed effectively.

• Partner with finance on spend forecasting and budget tracking.

What We’re Looking For

• 6+ years of experience in paid media, digital marketing, retail media or integrated media planning – brand or agency side.

• Experience managing a multi-channel paid media budget across both brand and performance objectives. Strong understanding of the consumer journey from awareness → consideration → conversion.

• Proven, hands-on experience across retail media networks (Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Ulta, Criteo, Sephora, etc) - this is non-negotiable.

• Solid working knowledge of DTC paid channels: search, social, and retargeting.

• Demonstrated ability to build reporting infrastructure independently - you’ve owned a performance framework, not just contributed to one.

• Comfortable operating autonomously - you can own a channel end-to-end without being managed to it.

• Ability to operate strategically while remaining comfortable in the details and execution.

• Strong analytical instincts - you turn data into clear recommendations, not just reports. Ability to connect media performance to broader brand and business objectives, not just channel-level KPIs.

• Collaborative by nature, but capable of driving independently in a fast-moving, lean environment.