Director, Audience Activation

NielsenIQ•New York, NY

2h•$117,250 - $150,000•Hybrid

About The Position

MRI-Simmons is an established brand that is aggressively reinventing itself through investments in technology and people. Widely recognized as the leading consumer insights company, MRI-Simmons measures consumer preferences, attitudes, and behaviors. MRI-Simmons is co-owned by GfK and SymphonyAI Group, with GfK as the majority partner. In 2023, NIQ combined with GfK, bringing together the two industry leaders with truly global reach and operations in 100+ markets, covering more than 90% of the world's population. We empower marketers, advertising agencies and media companies to turn deep consumer understanding into smarter strategies, targetable segmentation, and more effective advertising campaigns across all media channels: linear TV, Connected TV, Digital, and Social. We enrich customer first-party data to enable more comprehensive consumer profiling and activation. The Director, Audience Activation will be a key player in leading the sales initiatives for MRI-Simmons to grow our Advanced Advertising business, with solutions including data enrichment and audience activation. The ideal candidate will work collaboratively with the Media, Brand and Agency verticals to develop new sales opportunities, lead or participate in Advanced Advertising presentations, assist in developing new Advanced Advertising product initiatives, and finalize negotiations and contracts in relation to closing new business. This position will lead our engagement and penetration of Agency holding companies, specifically with Investment, Programmatic, Video and Activation teams, while supporting our relationships with their Client teams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree required.
5–10+ years of experience in sales or business development within advanced advertising, programmatic, addressable, data enablement, audience data, or ad tech.
Proven success driving audience activation initiatives within agencies or brands.
Strong ad tech industry network across agency stakeholders, including programmatic, activation, investment, and digital teams.
Deep understanding of the advanced advertising, programmatic activation, and audience data ecosystem, including planning/insights, activation, and measurement/attribution solutions for digital video and CTV.
Demonstrated ability to communicate the value of audience and data‑driven solutions in a clear, compelling way.
Exceptional relationship management and executive‑level communication skills.
Strong negotiation skills with experience navigating complex commercial agreements.
Highly collaborative, proactive, and self‑directed.
Consultative, self-directed seller and evangelist with a “hunter” mindset and the ability to create opportunity where none previously existed.
Comfortable leading complex, multi‑stakeholder communication efforts, connecting silos in an enterprise environment like a large agency holding company.
Strategic thinker who proactively identifies new use cases and growth opportunities.
Requires approximately 25% travel; in-agency presence expected.

Nice To Haves

Experience applying syndicated audience data to activation, planning, and partnership opportunities preferred.
Familiarity with Challenger sales methodology and MEDDICC frameworks preferred.
Strong agency presence is preferred with hands-on experience operating within ad agencies, leading educational programming, thought leadership initiatives, and events for agency planning and buying teams.

Responsibilities

Identify, develop, drive new business and upsell existing opportunities focused on audience activation, enrichment and data enablement.
Manage end‑to‑end customer engagement, including strategy, discussions, proposal and presentations development, negotiation, and contracts where necessary.
Own commercial discussions and manage deal terms and conditions in partnership with internal stakeholders to ensure audiences meet customer needs to drive utilizations.
Leverage strong, preferably existing, industry relationships across advertising and media agencies, and at times brands, and ad tech partners, with a strong focus on stakeholders in programmatic, digital, video, investment, and account teams.
Lead advanced advertising, audience activation, and other data‑driven proposals and presentations that clearly articulate the value of MRI‑Simmons audience intelligence.
Act as a trusted advisor to customers by aligning MRI‑Simmons audience solutions to customer business, media, and campaign activation objectives.
Partner closely with Commercial, Marketing, Operations and Product teams to provide client feedback and input that informs audience development and utilization prioritization.
Support the development of new data enablement and activation initiatives, partnerships, and go‑to‑market strategies.
Serve as a subject matter expert for advanced advertising and audience‑based activation, use cases, both external with customers and internal guiding sales colleagues on cross-team opportunities.
Coordinate outreach and engagement where needed with internal sales colleagues across all verticals.
Manage internal sales and audience revenue tracking processes; ensure tracking sheets, audience taxonomies, and CRM accuracy.
Support revenue collection team where necessary, aligning communication with all stakeholders.
Collaborate with Operations and Account Management teams when needed define data, technical, and delivery requirements.
Ensure client reporting requirements and contractual obligations are met.