Director of Paid Media

About the role

HMH is a learning technology company committed to delivering connected solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes. As a leading provider of K–12 core curriculum, supplemental and intervention solutions, and professional learning services, HMH partners with educators and school districts to uncover solutions that unlock students’ potential and extend teachers’ capabilities. HMH serves more than 50 million students and 4 million educators in 150 countries. Location: Remote (U.S.). The Director of Paid Media will own the paid content and media strategy, execution, and measurement across our portfolio of brands – with primary responsibility for using paid investment to support targeted accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) strategies that drive qualified demand, accelerate pipeline, and grow revenue. Reporting to the VP of Growth Marketing, the ideal candidate brings strong creative instincts for what makes advertising work, paired with the analytical rigor to optimize spend, media mix, and performance against clear business outcomes. This individual will set the paid content strategy and performance-informed content direction, working within the brand guidelines and design system owned and maintained by the Design team. In partnership with Design, they will help optimize templates and formats for both production efficiency and ad performance. They will own the feedback loop between live performance data and the next round of creative and will use AI throughout: accelerating asset and variant production, sharpening audience and bid strategy, and analyzing creative performance at scale. This role is grounded in data. We are looking for someone who reads performance trends across campaigns, channels, audiences, and creative assets, and reallocates budget toward what is working on a weekly cadence to improve return on ad spend. This individual will collaborate closely with Demand Generation, Customer Marketing, Marketing Operations, Brand, Design, and Business Unit marketing partners, and manage one direct report, the Digital Marketing Manager (Paid Media).

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end media planning, sponsorships, placements, and ad buying across paid search, paid social, programmatic display, online video/CTV, retargeting, and third-party publisher and industry media—including direct-sold display, newsletter, native, and sponsored placements.
• Oversee platform, publisher, and agency execution across the brand portfolio
• Translate business and funnel targets into channel, audience, placement, and budget plans that prioritize targeted accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) strategies for each brand
• Own the paid content strategy and direct day-to-day ad production in support of the Digital Marketing Manager (Paid Media), setting performance-informed content direction and reviewing output against paid media performance standards
• Partner with Design—which owns and maintains the brand guidelines and paid design system—to inform modular templates and format specifications that enable efficient production of high-quality variations; build and adapt variations directly when timing requires
• Build and run a hypothesis-driven creative testing roadmap: define what is being tested and why, set win criteria in advance, scale winners, and retire fatiguing creative
• Review performance on a weekly cadence and optimize in-flight campaigns – diagnose what is driving results and reallocate budget toward what is working, with continuous improvement in ROAS and cost per acquisition as the primary measures of success
• Manage the paid media budget: prioritize investment in targeted accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) programs; manage allocation across channels, brands, and campaigns; oversee pacing and forecasting; and provide clear reporting on spend efficiency and return to marketing and executive leadership
• Own paid media