Associate Director of Paid Media

About the role

As an Associate Director of Paid Media at Hybrid, you own the POD. You are responsible for everything your POD produces, the quality of the campaigns, the development of the people, and the outcomes for every university partner assigned to your team. You report directly to the Global Paid Media Director and lead one of four PODs in the Hybrid digital team. This is a senior people management role with significant partner-facing and commercial responsibility. You are the senior Hybrid digital contact for your Strategic Leader community, the final quality gate for your team's work, and a key contributor to how the wider digital organization grows and improves. This hire may be based in Philadelphia, PA, Richmond, VA, or Washington, D.C.

Responsibilities

• Own the performance and delivery quality of the POD, accountable to the Global Paid Media Director for KPIs, service standards, reporting quality, and partner outcomes across all assigned university accounts.
• Directly manage the Senior Paid Media Manager and, through them, the full POD structure, setting team priorities, running formal performance reviews, and developing each layer of the team with intent.
• Lead hiring and onboarding for the POD, owning role profiles for new hires, contributing to interview processes, and making sure new starters are set up for success from day one.
• Represent the POD in cross-POD leadership discussions, contributing to organization-wide standards, KPI frameworks, and operating model decisions.
• Set and maintain POD-level operating standards across quality assurance, campaign documentation, reporting, and tooling, holding the Senior Paid Media Manager accountable for consistent enforcement.
• Own the campaign performance review cycle for the highest-tier accounts, preparing the strategic narrative and presenting alongside the Strategic Leader.
• Collaborate with the Global Paid Media Director on account assignments, bringing informed input on account complexity, team capacity, and partner priority.
• Build, launch and optimize paid media campaigns across search and social, including Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, DV360 and Snapchat, for an assigned portfolio of university partners.
• Own your accounts end-to-end: build with precision, launch on time, optimize with intent, and report with clarity.
• Complete all required quality assurance processes before any campaign goes live. No exceptions, no shortcuts.
• Lead strategic and escalation partner calls alongside the Strategic Leader, owning the performance narrative, driving commercial recommendations, and identifying growth opportunities.
• Maintain strong working relationships with the Strategic Leader community assigned to your POD, understanding their partner portfolios, flagging risks early, and surfacing growth signals proactively.
• Contribute to the commercial growth of the EAB x Hybrid partnership, identifying where digital performance is driving partner outcomes and working with EAB leadership to support renewal and expansion.

Requirements