Associate Director of Paid Media, Hybrid

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 role with 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.

Responsibilities

• Team Leadership & Development – 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 future POD structure, setting team priorities, running formal performance reviews, and developing each layer of the team with intent. Play a role in hiring and onboarding for the POD, looking at 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.
• Campaign Quality & Operations – Set and maintain POD-level operating standards across quality assurance, campaign documentation, reporting, and tooling, holding team members 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, optimize and report on paid media campaigns across search and social, including Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, DV360 and Snapchat, for an assigned portfolio of university partners. Demonstrable experience and practical knowledge of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. 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.
• Partner & Commercial Engagement – 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

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, communications, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in digital marketing, paid media, and performance marketing.
• 2+ years of experience managing and developing individual contributors or digital marketing teams.
• Full cross-channel expertise across paid search, paid social, tracking and analytics.
• Proven track record leading senior partner-facing conversations and presentations.
• Experience managing complex, multi-account portfol