Associate Director, Investment Enablement
We are OMD, Cannes Lions 2024 Media Network of the Year, RECMA's Best-Performing Media Network Globally, and COMvergence's #1 Global Agency Network. As the world’s largest media network, with more than 12,000 people working in over 100 countries, we excel at making better decisions, faster. By combining innovation, creativity, empathy, and evidence, we help clients move faster, reach further, and take smarter risks in a world full of opportunities
We pride ourselves on being a people-obsessed, outcomes-focused business that applies evidence and data-based solutions, married with the practice of empathy, to drive performance and growth. When working with our clients, we put ourselves in the shoes of the consumer in order to see the world through their eyes. We focus on finding greater empathy with the consumer so as to uncover insights and opportunities that deliver more valued and valuable connections.
The Associate Director, Media Operations & Investment Governance serves as a senior operational leader responsible for ensuring end-to-end media investment integrity, financial governance, and flawless execution across complex, multi-channel media ecosystems. This role partners closely with senior stakeholders across Investment, Planning, Marketing Science, Operations, Finance, Project Management, Offshore Operations, and Media Reconciliation, acting as a connective tissue between strategy, execution, and financial accountability.
At the Associate Director level, this role moves beyond executional oversight into operating model leadership, process design, risk management, and people leadership, while serving as a trusted advisor to both clients and internal leadership.
Success Indicators at the Associate Director Level
- Reduced billing delays, clearing issues, and vendor discrepancies.
- Improved financial transparency and audit readiness across accounts.
- High adoption and compliance with standardized ways of working.
- Strong client confidence in operational rigor and governance.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Operations Leadership
- Own and evolve media investment operational frameworks, ensuring scalable, compliant, and efficient ways of working across all channels and markets.
- Act as escalation point for uncleared campaigns, billing discrepancies, compliance risks, and vendor issues, resolving complex situations with minimal disruption.
- Partner with senior Investment and Finance leadership to proactively identify risk, dependency, and timing issues that could impact cash flow, partner payments, or client trust.
Financial Governance & Investment Integrity
- Provide senior-level oversight of media clearing, invoicing, and reconciliation across fees and working media, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and audit readiness.
- Lead governance for ATB / PO / billing workflows, aligning Investment teams, Finance (R2P), and vendors on clear ownership and approval paths.
- Drive continuous improvement of Mediaocean, Prisma, MediaTools, and budget tracking infrastructure, ensuring tools support scale, transparency, and control.
- Establish and enforce financial guidelines, templates, and operational roadmaps, standardizing best practices across teams and markets.
Cross-Functional Integration & Operating Model Design
- Lead integration across Planning, Integrated Investment, Marketing Science, Finance, BPM, Project Management, and Offshore Operations, ensuring seamless handoffs and shared accountability.
- Operationalize onshore/offshore engagement models, clarifying swim lanes, SLAs, escalation paths, and quality standards.
- Embed digital and finance expertise into project plans, timelines, and client deliverables, ensuring consistency and predictability.
Process Excellence & Change Management
- Own rollout of new processes, tools, and ways of working, including training design, adoption tracking, and ongoing compliance audits.
- Serve as executive sponsor for process optimization initiatives, identifying inefficiencies, redundancies, and automation opportunities.
- Translate complex operational requirements into clear, client-ready documentation (WOWs, playbooks, RACI, SOPs).
Client Partnership & Senior Stakeholder Management
- Act as a senior operational advisor to clients, ensuring transparency into media investment, billing, productivity, and governance.
- Lead complex client conversations related to billing delays, compliance issues, vendor discrepancies, and financial risk, maintaining confidence and trust.
- Proactively merchandise operational wins, productivity gains, and risk mitigation efforts to clients and internal leadership.
Team Leadership & Talent Development
- Set quality standards and accountability for junior and offshore team members; ensure consistent execution across the organization.
- Contribute to workforce planning, resourcing models, and capability development aligned to future operating needs.
Associate Director–Level Qualifications
- 6–9+ years of agency Investment / Media Operations experience, with demonstrated ownership of complex financial and operational workflows.
- Expertise in Mediaocean (DDS, Prisma), ad servers (Google Campaign Manager, Innovid), and buying platforms (e.g., Meta, Search, DV360), with strong understanding of ad tech and brand safety ecosystems.
- Advanced Excel expertise; proven ability to design and audit complex financial and operational models.
- Strong executive presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and clients.
- Proven experience leading cross-functional initiatives, driving change, and scaling processes.
- Demonstrated people leadership experience, including mentoring managers and leading distributed teams.
- Exceptional problem-solving skills with the ability to manage ambiguity and competing priorities.
Core Leadership Principles
- Collaborative: Leads across teams, not in silos.
- Communicative: Sets clarity and direction with transparency.
- Confident: Operates with authority and calm decision-making.
- Courageous: Owns difficult conversations and drives change.
- Accountable: Treats client investment with the rigor of personal capital.
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This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on relevant experience, other job-related qualifications/skills, and geographic location (to account for comparative cost of living). The Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time. For this role, benefits include: health insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance, 401(k), Healthcare Flexible Spending Account, Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account, vacation days, sick days, personal days, paid parental leave, paid medical leave, and STD/LTD insurance benefits.
This role is hybrid, requiring three (3) days per week in the office. The remaining two (2) days may be worked remotely. Specific in-office days will be discussed during the interview process, with flexibility to align with team needs. Please note that the number or required in-office days may be adjusted over time, potentially increasing the number of required in-office days based on business needs.
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