Digital Marketing/Communications Manager: Paid Media Buying — Publisher Direct, Endemic Trade & Programmatic

This position is remote/work from home. You need to reside within the Eastern or Central Time Zones (Atlanta is preferred). If you live near any of the office locations listed, the role will be hybrid. The Digital Marketing / Communications Manager owns paid media buying across endemic trade publications, industry sponsorships, and programmatic platforms in support of the entire enterprise marketing portfolio. This role plans, negotiates, executes, and optimizes publisher-direct placements - display, newsletter, native, custom content, event and print - and manages a secondary book of programmatic and paid social buying. As the enterprise moves media buying in-house, this role develops the buying model itself: establishing scalable processes for publisher negotiation, insertion order management, trafficking, verification, and reconciliation where those processes do not exist today. This is a deep subject matter expert role without direct reports. The Manager partners with Product and Brand Marketing on campaign objectives and audience priorities, with Marketing Analytics on measurement design and attribution, with MarTech on audience activation and tag governance, and with Supply Chain and Finance on publisher contracts, purchase orders, and spend reconciliation. Success looks like a defensible annual publisher plan, negotiated rates that measurably improve cost efficiency against prior agency-managed spend, and reporting that connects media investment to pipeline outcomes. What You'll Do Publisher-Direct & Endemic Trade Media Buying Develops and evolves the annual endemic media plan, defining publisher mix, placement types, flighting, and budget allocation against campaign and business objectives. Negotiate rates, added value, and contract terms directly with trade publishers, evaluating rate cards against audience quality, historical performance, and comparable market benchmarks. Manages the full buy cycle from RFP and proposal evaluation through insertion order execution, trafficking, in-flight monitoring, make-good resolution, and post-campaign reconciliation. Assesses publisher audience composition, circulation and traffic claims, and third-party verification data to determine whether a placement reaches the intended buyer audience. Establishes scalable frameworks for publisher evaluation and renewal decisions, including performance thresholds that determine which partners scale, hold, or sunset. Maintains the publisher relationship portfolio, conducting regular performance reviews and surfacing new inventory, formats, and first-look opportunities. Sponsorships, Custom Content & Print Placements Plans and executes sponsorship packages including newsletter takeovers, webinars, research reports, awards programs, and industry event presence. Develops creative briefs for custom content and sponsored editorial, partnering with Content and Brand Marketing teams to produce assets that meet publisher specifications and brand standards. Manages print placements including space reservations, material deadlines, mechanical specifications, and proofing coordination. Recommends and drives the balance between awareness-oriented sponsorship investment and direct-response placements based on program objectives and measured contribution. Programmatic & Platform Buying Manages campaign execution across DSPs and paid social platforms, including setup, audience targeting, bid strategy selection, pacing, and daily optimization. Manages audience targeting across retargeting, lookalike, intent-based, and first-party segments activated from the enterprise customer data platform. Coordinates creative testing across ad copy, visuals, calls to action, and landing pages, and applies results to subsequent flights. Establishes platform-specific best practices that account for differing algorithms, inventory quality, formats, and audience behaviors across buying platforms. Media Operations, Budget & Vendor Management Manages the paid media budget acros…

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