Ad Operations Manager

Platform Media is an industry leading, central hub for branded entertainment, marketing, and monetisation. Its three content labels focus on original content creation. The business has kicked off a new era with a blockbuster lineup of originals in sport and entertainment. Recent hit launches from the supergroup include Olivia Attwood’s Olivia’s House, BBC’s The Traitors: Uncloaked, The Romesh Ranganathan Show, Wanging On with Graham Norton & The Good, The Bad, and The Rugby.

Platform Media is an entertainment company creating shows, channels and brands across video, social and beyond. It builds worlds around the people, stories and ideas audiences care about most, bringing production, distribution, marketing and monetisation together under one roof. With original hit shows spanning sports, comedy and culture, Platform Media’s slate stars household names including Ricky Gervais,  Graham Norton, Romesh Ranganathan and Olivia Attwood.

We're looking for an Ad Operations Manager to set up and run dynamic podcast inventory at Platform Media.

Right now we sell baked-in host reads across audio and video. As an important next phase of our growth, we're bringing dynamic advertising in-house, which means building the ad ops function that sits underneath it. 

This role will focus on owning how dynamic inventory is forecast, booked, trafficked, delivered, reported and reconciled across a portfolio that includes some of the UK's biggest podcast talent. The role sits at the heart of the commercial team, making sure that what we sell can actually be delivered, accurately, efficiently and on time.

This role is an exciting opportunity for someone who has experience in ad operations and wants to contribute to strategy, and the overall commercial growth of Platform Media. 

• Design and implement the processes and infrastructure required to sell dynamic podcast advertising.
• Work with our technology and distribution partners to ensure inventory is set up, segmented and forecastable.

• Own end-to-end delivery of dynamic campaigns across the Platform Media portfolio.
• Set up campaigns, targeting, creative and delivery parameters in our ad tech stack.
• QA creative and insertion orders before campaigns go live and ahead of billing.
• Monitor pacing and delivery, troubleshoot issues with partners, and manage changes, extensions and makegoods.

• Sit alongside sales to make sure what's being sold, can be delivered
• Provide availability, sell-through and delivery information that sales can act on.

• Own campaign reporting and delivery reconciliation
• Monitor impressions, pacing and performance; flag risk early and recommend fixes.
• Build reporting that works for internal and external use.
• Use delivery data to sharpen forecasting and inventory management over time.

• Create and document best-practice workflows, and keep them current as the business changes.
• Identify gaps in how we work now and fix them rather than flag them.
• Manage the operational relationship with our ad tech and distribution partners.
• Contribute to Platform Media’s continued growth with a scalable, automated dynamic model.

• Proven experience in ad operations, campaign management or a digital media role working with ad servers.
• Solid understanding of how digital campaigns are booked, trafficked, delivered, reported and billed.
• Working knowledge of CPM-based trading and impression delivery.
• Strong attention to detail, this is a role where small errors become invoicing problems.
• Comfortable with data: intermediate Excel as a minimum
• Confident learning new platforms quickly and working across commercial, content, finance and external partners.
• Experience with audio or podcast advertising and dynamic ad insertion (e.g Megaphone, Triton, AdsWizz or similar).
• Comfortable with podcast tagging solutions (e.g. Podscribe, Magellan AI etc)

• Familiarity with Google Ad Manager, and with programmatic buying routes and DSP/SSP mechanics.
• Experience standing up a new process or platform rather than only running an existing one.

At Platform Media, we're committed to giving everyone a fair chance, no matter their background. We create content for a wide range of people, and we know that having a team with different experiences and perspectives makes our work better.  Therefore, we encourage people from all backgrounds to apply, especially those from communities that have been historically underrepresented.

If you don’t meet every requirement of the role but believe you’d be a great fit, we’d love to still hear from you!

🌴 26 days annual leave (with yearly option to buy 5 days more) 

💻 Hybrid working with flexible hours 

🏥 Top-tier private medical insurance & healthcare cash plan

✅ Life insurance 

💰Pension plan

🧠 Mental health support via our Employee Assistance Programme 

🚲 Cycle to Work scheme