Director, Performance Media

BMG360•Shelton, CT

5h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Performance Media leads BMG360’s pay-per-performance media business and owns its P&L. This is a commercial leadership role as much as a media role: the group buys media at risk, is paid on delivered performance, and makes or loses money on the accuracy of its forecasting and the discipline of its buying. Reporting to the SVP, Performance, this leader runs the Performance Media team which includes two Managers and several Senior Analysts/ Analysts across traditional lead generation channels with digital being secondary. They are accountable for profitable volume: hitting client call and lead thresholds while protecting the margin on every buy, and for scaling the group through cross-sell, new bundle activation, and the right new business. The defining requirement is comfort with media risk. When the payment return is a call payout or a performance guarantee, the agency carries the financial exposure. This role owns that exposure.

Requirements

6+ years in performance media, including direct response and lead generation, with experience leading a team. Managing managers is preferred, managing analysts at minimum.
Margin or P&L accountability. Has carried a gross profit or margin number, not only a media budget, and can speak to how they protected it in a bad quarter.
Experience buying media at risk via per-inquiry, cost-per-call, or performance-guarantee structures where the agency’s own capital is exposed.
Insurance vertical expertise strongly preferred. Insurance or comparable regulated categories with working knowledge of regulatory compliance in lead generation environments. Home services also a strong plus.
Forecasting rigor. Can predict response and call volume accurately, understands rate and pricing variability, and builds bidding or rate strategies that hold up through seasonal and marketplace swings.
Cross-channel fluency across traditional response channels and digital lead generation, with enough depth to challenge the team’s assumptions rather than accept their reporting.
Strong analytical skills and the ability to extrapolate data trends into decisions, with fluency in the financial consequence of each one.
Executive communication. Presents cleanly to senior leadership and states the problem before being asked.

Nice To Haves

Managing managers is preferred
Insurance vertical expertise strongly preferred
Home services also a strong plus

Responsibilities

Own the Performance Media P&L: revenue, media cost, margin, and gross profit by client and by channel.
Manage budgets and the associated risk of buying media where the payment return is a call payout or performance guarantee.
Oversee and manage cash buy opportunities within the Performance Media group — evaluating, pricing, and approving buys against margin thresholds.
Forecast spend and response with high accuracy, including cost per unique call, and manage pacing to protect both volume commitments and profit targets.
Design bidding and rate strategies that flex with seasonal trends and marketplace conditions while holding minimum volume thresholds and margin floors simultaneously.
Escalate risk early. Identify buys, clients, or channels where the economics have turned, and act before the quarter absorbs it.
Lead and manage pay-per-performance media campaigns across traditional channels, and across digital lead generation channels, to drive profitable growth.
Predict response and call volume accurately, and know how to dial volume up or down at critical moments.
Optimize for quality as well as cost and track call conversion quality, not only cost per lead, and evolve tactics toward scalable results.
Work in tandem with the call routing team to manage joint concurrent call volume capacity limits.
Partner with Creative, Media, and Ad Operations to maximize campaign performance; brief the in-house development team on lead generation assets and landing environments.
Ensure all customer lead generation environments are 100% compliant with applicable regulatory requirements.
Stay current on channel, marketplace, and regulatory developments, and bring new approaches and technology into how the group buys.
Oversee the Performance Media team including two Managers and 3-5 Senior Analysts/Analysts ensuring strong execution and strategic alignment.
Manage resource allocation and capacity planning to support current accounts and anticipated growth.
Recruit, build, and train the team required to deploy these strategies at scale.
Develop the two Managers into leaders who can run their books independently, and build a bench beneath them.
Set the operating cadence: pacing reviews, margin reviews, and performance check-ins that catch problems inside the week rather than at month end.
Identify and activate cross-sell opportunities within existing Performance Media clients and across the broader organization.
Partner with Business Development to identify and pursue opportunities that align with Performance Media objectives and decline the ones that do not.
Bring a commercial point of view to pricing and deal structure on new performance business, including which risk the agency should and should not take.
Build the case for channel or capability expansion where the economics support it.
Lead the New Bundle Activation Project, ensuring successful launch and scaling of new performance media bundles including pricing, delivery model, margin structure, and go-to-market readiness.
Own performance reporting for the group, delivering weekly insight on key metrics and financial outcomes to executive leadership.
Make the reporting diagnostic rather than descriptive: what changed, why, what is being done about it, and what the financial consequence is.
Support the SVP, Performance with the analysis and recommendations required for investment and resourcing decisions.