Director of Paid Media, Performance Video
$150,000–$170,000 year
RemoteChicago, Illinois, United States
Job Summary
Own P&L and performance for Insurance YouTube campaigns, driving 2x annualized run rate with 110% ROAS through hands-on Google Ads execution, audience strategy, and bidding. Scale multi-vertical buying across auto, home, health, ACA, and Medicare, tailoring creative and messaging to distinct customer journeys while expanding into streaming, linear TV, and emerging video channels. Build repeatable playbooks for creative testing and call-based lead generation, leveraging AI tools to accelerate iteration and reduce bottlenecks. Communicate daily performance insights and decisions to stakeholders and leadership to drive alignment across analytics, sales, and product teams.
Required Qualifications
- 8+ years managing high-growth performance marketing portfolios
- 3+ years managing and scaling YouTube, Meta, TikTok, and/or other video-first portfolios with budgets of $20M+/year
- Experience scaling performance video in at least one major lead gen niche: affiliate, call-based, insurance, financial services, health, or marketplace
- Video-first scaling track record: Proven success profitably scaling brands across video performance platforms, with deep hands-on expertise in YouTube, Meta, and TikTok
- Hands-on platform execution: Comfortable living in-platform and building campaigns directly (campaign architecture, audience and bidding strategy, conversion event setup, testing design, budget pacing, daily optimization), not managing from a distance
- Affiliate lead gen: Strong grasp of monetization dynamics, advertiser quality metrics, funnel optimization, and scaling traffic profitably across variable-payout partner ecosystems
- Multi-vertical buying: Experience buying across multiple verticals at once, adapting structure, audience, creative, and messaging to distinct customer journeys. Insurance experience (auto, home, health, ACA, Medicare) especially valuable
- Analytical depth: Proficiency in BI tools (Looker, Google Analytics) plus advanced Excel/Sheets (pivot tables, VLOOKUP, regression, correlation, performance modeling)
- Video creative judgment: Strong understanding of what drives high-performing video (YouTube ABCDs, hooks, category entry points, funnel stage, audience intent, offer positioning, trending formats) and how to adapt creative per platform. Able to think like the customer and map angle, audience, and format to funnel stage
- AI-enabled speed: Able to move quickly on creative testing using AI and self-serve tools (Higgsfield, Runway, CapCut, MidJourney, Gemini, VEO3, Claude, or similar) to develop concepts and iterate without leaning on centralized creative resources
- Cross-functional partnership: Builds strong relationships across analytics, sales/account management, leadership, vertical stakeholders, creative, product, and external vendors
- P&L ownership: Demonstrated experience owning P&L, hitting aggressive growth and profitability goals, and building repeatable playbooks that scale wins across brands and verticals
- Communication: Exceptional, proactive written and verbal communication; comfortable presenting insights and influencing decisions through Slack, Zoom, and executive-facing updates
Desired Qualifications
- Measurement sophistication: MMM, incrementality, geo holdouts, or brand lift to quantify video's halo across channels
- Lead gen verticals beyond insurance: personal finance, lending, credit cards, home services, consumer subscriptions
- Scalable best practices: Team building, mentoring channel owners, or formalizing playbooks across brands
- Competitive intelligence tools: SimilarWeb, AdBeat, Ahrefs, SpyFu, Pathmatics
- Specific Compliance: Background in regulated marketing environments (consumer finance, insurance, healthcare)
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