Head of Media Strategy & Planning - US

Job Description

The North America Marketing team at Booking.com is looking for an exciting candidate to head up Media Strategy & Planning. This is a senior role where the world of defining a media strategy to deliver on macro business objectives combines with true performance marketing. We are looking for someone who excels in both worlds. You must feel as comfortable with overall media strategy, offline channel planning as you do with the digital channel performance, data, analytics and continuous optimization.

In this role you will contribute to the growth of the Booking.com business in North America (one of the top growth priorities for the company globally), by leading the development of integrated media strategies, plans and performance partnering with the US Marketing team as well as global media teams. You will do this in an audience and results centric way by selecting the right media channels, investment mix, using the range of data available to you, in order to achieve investment, ROI and growth targets and identifying new sources of demand in order to help accelerate the growth of our North America business.

The ideal candidate will have media planning experience across multiple offline and online media channels, in particular a deep understanding of programmatic and managing channels such as YouTube, Facebook, GMP, and others, to drive efficient performance/acquisition. You must be capable of creating efficient and effective media plans that are built on data, performance metrics, and have strong experience with rigorous A/B testing and measurement.

Experience across strategy, planning, buying and optimization as well as offline / online is key for this role. As is the experience in building multi-market media strategies, managing media agencies at a regional / global level and the ability to lead strategic media projects such as global partner management.

This role reports to the Americas Regional Marketing Director. The successful candidate will work closely with the North America Communications Manager, manage a Media Specialist, lead the relationship with Mindshare US (also based out of New York), and work very closely with the Global Media Team (Strategy & Planning, Programmatic Media Operations) & Analytics teams (based in Amsterdam). This role is based in New York.

Responsibilities:

• Manage the media components of our Integrated Marketing Communications process; working in a cross functional team to contribute to audience / insight development, as well as leading connections planning & the creation of media strategies through to execution.
• The focus of the role will be working with the North America marketing team to help develop integrated, creative and impactful media strategies that deliver on our business goals.
• Establish strong relationships with key leads across global media teams, comms and insights for effective campaign creation and delivery. Push our North American media agency to deliver excellence & agility in their thinking and recommendations.
• Ensure all media investment is measurable against KPI’s and accountable for meeting acquisition/performance goals with clear optimization roadmaps.
• Lead daily collaboration with our in-house programmatic team (based in Amsterdam HQ) to ensure all online campaign activity is performing and activated in line with our media strategy, channel ROI, investment and growth goals.
• Work closely with the wider media team as well as our marketing analytics team to test, measure and learn from all activity we are deploying.
• Drive local market media planning: this includes media agency briefing, reviewing and feeding back on responses and advising on total and channel budget setting
• Ensure global media strategy & local creative assets are utilized in the most relevant way across all channels by influencing key local and global teams.
• Take an active role in driving our innovation roadmap. Including testing new demand channels to best connect with our consumer and drive performance and growth.

Required Skills:

• Strong digital and programmatic media knowledge with demonstrable experience using digital media to hit performance / acquisition goals.
• 8-10+ years of experience within media planning / management.
• Able to review the performance of campaigns in detail as well as understand correct testing (A/B) methods to demonstrate results and prioritize future tests & optimizations.
• Able to drive data-driven integrated strategy and practical planning from agency partners and internal teams.
• Solid experience in media strategy and planning across both offline & online media channels (e.g. TV, Digital, Social, Audio, OOH).
• Ability to easily move from business objective to media strategy and through to activation.
• Able to build and maintain strong and effective relationships with media owners and agencies, as well as with internal teams.
• Previous experience overseeing the development and activation of sponsorships
• Natural curiosity and passion for media (new trends, media and technology) and strong attention to detail, great organizational and people skills and effective team-player.
• Team player, with the ability to inspire and be inspired by many different types of people and roles.
• Previous e-commerce experience would be highly beneficial
• Fluent in English (any additional languages welcomed)
• Must be authorized to work in the United States