Associate Director, Search Capability & Craft Excellence

Adelphi Group • Chicago, IL

9d • $115,000 - $130,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

This role is responsible for owning search strategy and standards, driving innovation, managing alpha/beta/pilot programs, and staying ahead of AI Search and emerging search environments. The position involves developing and maintaining Search playbooks, POVs, and best practices to enhance consistency and quality across platforms and campaigns. It also includes leading practitioner education and certification, fostering community knowledge sharing, and contributing to thought leadership. The role supports new business development, client growth, and evaluates search platforms and partners. Additionally, it involves defining measurement and learning agendas, and managing the overall Search Capability & Craft Excellence portfolio through program management.

Requirements

• 6+ years of relevant paid-search, search strategy, performance media or digital capability experience; agency or enterprise-scale experience strongly preferred.
• Deep working knowledge of Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, including Search, Shopping, Performance Max, AI-powered campaign capabilities, audience activation, feeds, measurement and platform automation.
• Strong understanding of SA360 or comparable campaign-management platforms, web analytics, conversion measurement and experimentation fundamentals.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex cross-functional programs from ambiguous brief through launch, adoption and continuous improvement.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with experience producing POVs, playbooks and clear recommendations.
• Strong analytical judgment: able to interpret performance data, assess evidence quality, identify limitations and connect findings to business decisions.
• Comfort working with product, data, engineering, measurement and platform-partner teams; able to translate practitioner needs into structured requirements.
• Highly organized, proactive and detail-oriented, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and senior stakeholders in a fast-moving environment.
• A test-learn-scale mindset balanced with governance, advertiser control, brand safety and operational rigor.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with AI Search (like ChatGPT Ads), conversational advertising, generative-AI workflows, agentic tools or search-discoverability strategy.
• Experience building or rolling out internal products, automation, QA tools, playbooks across multiple accounts or teams.
• Google Ads Search certification; additional Microsoft Advertising, SA360, Analytics, Shopping or Performance certifications are valuable.

Responsibilities

• Translate platform capabilities and market developments into practical guidance.
• Develop and maintain Search playbooks, POVs, execution standards, best practices and capability frameworks.
• Support channel-specific innovation from ideation through requirements, development, testing, integration and rollout.
• Identify appropriate accounts, coordinate participation and training, establish feedback loops, track milestones and adoption for alpha, beta and pilot programs.
• Help shape guidance across AI Mode, AI Max, Performance Max, conversational and answer-engine advertising (ChatGPT), search discoverability and agentic commerce.
• Pressure-test new opportunities for client fit, readiness, controls, measurement and scale.
• Maintain channel-specific onboarding and training content, support certification pathways, and coordinate platform and partner learning sessions.
• Lead search community meetings by curating relevant updates, source speakers and ensure materials are accessible.
• Support the development of landscape perspectives, guidance rapid-response POVs.
• Source, validate, write and organize case studies across teams.
• Build a searchable evidence base for client growth, new business, leadership communications and practitioner learning.
• Contribute to pitches, RFIs and strategic client requests through capability definition, audits, platform and partner perspectives, case-study selection and clear articulation of Omnicom’s Search differentiation.
• Support structured evaluations of search platforms and emerging partners.
• Provide Search input as partnerships are shaped and socialized.
• Help define test plans, success criteria and reporting frameworks for priority initiatives.
• Separate platform claims from evidence, capture limitations and turn results into decisions on whether to stop, refine, expand or scale.
• Maintain roadmaps, priorities, owners, dependencies, risks, decisions and status reporting across the Search Capability & Craft Excellence portfolio.
• Drive follow-through across multiple workstreams without losing strategic intent.

Benefits

• Omnicom’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager.
• Omnicom is committed to hiring and developing exceptional talent.
• We strongly believe that celebrating what makes us different makes us better together.
• We will process your personal data in accordance with our Recruitment Privacy Notice.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed