Performance Marketing Manager

Applovin•Palo Alto, CA

About The Position

AppLovin is hiring a founding Performance Marketing Manager to own all of paid growth for Gist, a new social media platform. This role involves setting the performance marketing strategy, building the measurement foundation, and running testing loops across various channels to control Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) from the outset. The successful candidate will be the sole expert responsible for all paid acquisition efforts, with no existing team or playbook to rely on.

Requirements

3-7 years of brand-side performance marketing experience, with direct ownership of budgets and outcomes for a consumer app, marketplace, or digital product.
Proven experience driving growth from a cold start, having launched performance marketing for a new product or market from zero.
Hands-on fluency across Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads Manager, and Google Ads.
Demonstrated experience managing off-platform or non-self-serve partnerships (e.g., ad networks, OEM or device partnerships, media direct buys, affiliate or performance platforms).
Experience with mobile attribution tooling such as Adjust or equivalent.
Proficiency in key metrics: CAC, CPI, LTV, ROAS, Day 7/30 payback, and funnel conversion rates.
Strong negotiation and partner management skills.
Senior individual contributor mindset, thriving independently and setting strategy without hand-holding.

Nice To Haves

Experience running performance marketing specifically for a social, entertainment, or consumer app.
Exposure to influencer or KOL-driven paid amplification as an acquisition channel.
Familiarity with incrementality testing, geo-splits, or media mix modeling.
SQL or BI tool fluency (Looker, Tableau, Metabase) for self-serve analysis.

Responsibilities

Manage all paid channels including Meta, TikTok, Google, programmatic, ad networks, and emerging channels.
Identify, negotiate, and manage relationships with external partners such as media companies, OEM and on-device distribution partners, ad networks, affiliate and performance platforms, and publisher direct buys.
Own the monthly performance marketing budget, with full accountability to CAC, CPI, LTV, and ROAS.
Allocate budget dynamically across channels and partners based on performance, scaling successful strategies and cutting underperforming ones.
Set up tracking to extract meaningful performance data, diagnose shifts, identify trends, and translate data into actionable insights.
Run structured tests across audiences, creatives, bidding strategies, ad formats, and partner inventory.
Collaborate with product and growth teams to understand post-install user behavior and optimize for activation and retention.
Explore non-obvious distribution channels such as influencer/KOL paid amplification, content seeding partnerships, cross-platform distribution deals, and incentivized install ecosystems.