Associate Director, Paid Social

AbelsonTaylor Group•Chicago, IL

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

AbelsonTaylor Group (ATG) is seeking an Associate Director, Paid Social to join their Performance Media team. This role is crucial for providing strategic leadership, channel expertise, and client guidance for healthcare and pharmaceutical brands. The Associate Director will develop and oversee integrated paid social strategies to achieve business outcomes, ensuring alignment with broader media and marketing objectives. This individual will act as a trusted advisor to clients, collaborate with paid search and programmatic leaders, and contribute to the advancement of the agency's paid social capabilities through innovation and team development. The ideal candidate is a strategic thinker, strong communicator, and experienced leader passionate about the social landscape and thriving in a collaborative, fast-paced environment.

Requirements

6+ years of paid social planning, activation, and management experience, including significant experience within pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing.
Deep expertise in Meta and LinkedIn, with experience across other relevant platforms such as TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, X, and emerging social platforms.
Demonstrated ability to act as a strategic consultant and subject matter expert for both clients and internal stakeholders.
Strong understanding of audience strategy, targeting methodologies, first-party data applications, privacy considerations, and measurement approaches.
Experience developing integrated strategies alongside paid search, programmatic, and analytics teams.
Proven success managing complex, multi-brand, and multi-channel paid media programs.
Strong client leadership, presentation, and communication skills, with the ability to translate complex platform dynamics into clear business recommendations.
Experience leading and developing teams through coaching, mentorship, and performance management.
Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative environment while balancing multiple priorities and stakeholders.
Experience with pharmaceutical regulatory considerations, medical/legal review processes, and healthcare marketing best practices strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Serve as the agency's paid social subject matter expert across client engagements and internal teams.
Lead paid social strategy development for multiple clients, ensuring recommendations align with business objectives, audience needs, and performance goals.
Oversee channel planning, activation, optimization, measurement, and reporting across paid social programs.
Develop platform-specific strategies and tactical recommendations across Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, X, and emerging social platforms.
Translate industry trends, platform updates, privacy changes, and beta opportunities into actionable recommendations for clients and agency teams.
Establish and maintain paid social best practices, testing frameworks, operational standards, and measurement approaches.
Remain hands-on in campaign setup, trafficking, optimization, and troubleshooting while providing strategic oversight and direction to the team.
Oversee pharmaceutical platform requirements, including account verification, prescription drug advertising authorization, and resolution of ad disapprovals in partnership with platform representatives.
Partner closely with Paid Search, Programmatic, Analytics, Strategy, and Client Services teams to develop integrated, full-funnel media strategies.
Ensure paid social recommendations complement broader channel strategies and customer journeys.
Collaborate with channel leads to identify cross-channel optimization opportunities and unified measurement approaches.
Contribute to annual planning, audience strategy, media investment allocation, and campaign architecture discussions.
Serve as a senior client-facing leader across assigned accounts.
Present strategic recommendations, performance insights, testing roadmaps, and investment opportunities to client stakeholders.
Lead social media planning discussions, business reviews, and performance meetings.
Act as a trusted consultant by providing thought leadership and strategic guidance on the evolving paid social landscape.
Identify opportunities to expand client engagement and grow paid social and performance media services.
Use multiple data sources and platform insights to evaluate campaign effectiveness and identify growth opportunities.
Lead audience, creative, placement, bidding, and conversion optimization strategies.
Develop testing frameworks and measurement approaches that support continuous improvement.
Translate campaign performance into meaningful business insights and actionable recommendations.
Manage budget allocation, pacing, forecasting, and billing reconciliation across paid social programs, including third-party vendor budgets and coordination with Finance.
Oversee UTMs, trafficking processes, and pre-launch quality assurance checks in partnership with Analytics to ensure accurate implementation, tracking, and measurement.
Mentor, coach, and develop junior team members across the Performance Media and paid social disciplines.
Provide strategic guidance and quality assurance throughout campaign planning and activation processes.
Support onboarding, training, and career development initiatives.
Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning.
Maintain strong relationships with key platform and publisher partners.
Support new business pitches, agency marketing efforts, and thought leadership initiatives.
Identify innovative opportunities to advance the agency's paid social capabilities and client offerings.
Stay current on evolving healthcare, pharmaceutical, social media, privacy, and measurement trends.