Director of Paid Media

HMH

4d•$110,000 - $145,000•Remote

About The Position

HMH is a learning technology company committed to delivering connected solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes. As a leading provider of K–12 core curriculum, supplemental and intervention solutions, and professional learning services, HMH partners with educators and school districts to uncover solutions that unlock students’ potential and extend teachers’ capabilities. HMH serves more than 50 million students and 4 million educators in 150 countries. For more information, visit www.hmhco.com Location: Remote (U.S.) The Director of Paid Media will own the paid content and media strategy, execution, and measurement across our portfolio of brands – with primary responsibility for using paid investment to support targeted accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) strategies that drive qualified demand, accelerate pipeline, and grow revenue. Reporting to the VP of Growth Marketing, the ideal candidate brings strong creative instincts for what makes advertising work, paired with the analytical rigor to optimize spend, media mix, and performance against clear business outcomes. This individual will set the paid content strategy and performance-informed content direction, working within the brand guidelines and design system owned and maintained by the Design team. In partnership with Design, they will help optimize templates and formats for both production efficiency and ad performance. They will own the feedback loop between live performance data and the next round of creative and will use AI throughout: accelerating asset and variant production, sharpening audience and bid strategy, and analyzing creative performance at scale. This role is grounded in data. We are looking for someone who reads performance trends across campaigns, channels, audiences, and creative assets, and reallocates budget toward what is working on a weekly cadence to improve return on ad spend. This individual will collaborate closely with Demand Generation, Customer Marketing, Marketing Operations, Brand, Design, and Business Unit marketing partners, and manage one direct report, the Digital Marketing Manager (Paid Media).

Requirements

8+ years of marketing or advertising experience, including 5+ years focused on paid media, and experience managing or mentoring at least one direct report
Demonstrated success shaping ad creative that performs and owning the channel performance and optimization that follows
Hands-on depth in media planning, placement, and ad buying across major paid platforms—including Google Ads (Search, Performance Max, YouTube), Meta, LinkedIn, and programmatic/DSP buying—and through direct relationships with third-party publishers and industry media partners, with the ability to negotiate, execute, and oversee agency-managed buys
Experience owning annual paid media budgets of $1M+, ideally across multiple brands or business lines, with a track record of concentrating spend rather than funding everything partially
Experience developing and executing paid media strategies for targeted-account and account-based marketing (ABM) programs
Strong analytical fluency – comfortable with GA4, B2B attribution models, incrementality testing, and BI/reporting tools – paired with a bias toward acting on a directional read; able to point to specific decisions that improved ROAS
Demonstrated use of AI tools to improve paid media strategy, creative production, optimization, or measurement, with a clear point of view on where AI adds leverage and where human judgment is essential
Comfortable in AI-assisted content tools and design platforms – able to build or adapt an ad variation directly, give specific direction to the person producing it, and work within a reusable template and brand system
Proven experience managing an external media agency – setting scope and holding partners accountable to performance
Effective leadership and managerial skills, with experience developing direct reports
Excellent communication, presentation, and collaboration skills, including experience presenting performance and recommendations to executive audiences
Ability to operate in a complex, matrixed, multi-stakeholder environment; strong project management skills, keen attention to detail, and excellent prioritization

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end media planning, sponsorships, placements, and ad buying across paid search, paid social, programmatic display, online video/CTV, retargeting, and third-party publisher and industry media—including direct-sold display, newsletter, native, and sponsored placements. Oversee platform, publisher, and agency execution across the brand portfolio
Translate business and funnel targets into channel, audience, placement, and budget plans that prioritize targeted accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) strategies for each brand
Own the paid content strategy and direct day-to-day ad production in support of the Digital Marketing Manager (Paid Media), setting performance-informed content direction and reviewing output against paid media performance standards
Partner with Design—which owns and maintains the brand guidelines and paid design system—to inform modular templates and format specifications that enable efficient production of high-quality variations; build and adapt variations directly when timing requires
Build and run a hypothesis-driven creative testing roadmap: define what is being tested and why, set win criteria in advance, scale winners, and retire fatiguing creative
Review performance on a weekly cadence and optimize in-flight campaigns – diagnose what is driving results and reallocate budget toward what is working, with continuous improvement in ROAS and cost per acquisition as the primary measures of success
Manage the paid media budget: prioritize investment in targeted accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) programs; manage allocation across channels, brands, and campaigns; oversee pacing and forecasting; and provide clear reporting on spend efficiency and return to marketing and executive leadership
Own paid media measurement and reporting in partnership with Growth Marketing and Business Solutions partners – define KPIs by funnel stage, ensure clean tracking and attribution to pipeline and revenue, use incrementality testing, where appropriate, to assess whether paid media is generating results beyond what would have occurred without the investment, and translate platform and agency data into campaign wrap-ups and executive readouts
Apply AI across paid media strategy, creative production, optimization, and measurement; follow established governance, brand safety, and review guardrails, and partner with Design and other stakeholders to strengthen them—including oversight of AI use in agency workflows
Serve as the primary day-to-day owner of the paid media agency relationship: scope and SOW management, budget pacing, campaign QA, performance reviews, and accountability to agreed KPIs
Partner with Demand Generation, Customer Marketing, Marketing Operations, Sales, and Business Unit marketing leads to align paid media with targeted-account selection, audience segmentation, account-based marketing (ABM) strategies, funnel targets, campaign calendars, and product priorities; prioritize competing requests into a focused portfolio that balances brand-specific needs against portfolio-level efficiency
Ensure all paid creative adheres to brand, tone-of-voice, legal and claims-review, and accessibility standards, and is positioned thoughtfully for an education audience
Manage, coach, and develop the Digital Marketing Manager (Paid Media); set clear goals and build a path for growth
Monitor platform changes, competitor advertising, and the shift toward AI-driven discovery in place of traditional organic search; recalibrate channel mix to capture demand where it moves