Associate Director, Data Strategy

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. With exceptional talent, trusted data and intelligence, and world-class partnerships – all united by our pioneering agentic marketing platform, WPP Open – we help clients navigate change, capture opportunity, and deliver transformational growth. 

WPP Media is WPP's AI-driven media operating unit, bringing together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalisation at scale. Connected through WPP Open and powered by Open Intelligence, clients see exactly where, how, and why their media investment is working.

For more information, visit wppmedia.com.

We're looking for a sharp, curious, and strategically minded Associate Director, Data Strategy to join the Data Strategy team in the US. This role will support one of the world's most iconic beauty brands — Estée Lauder.

This is a pivotal, client-facing role at the intersection of audience strategy, data activation, and media technology. You'll help set the foundations for intelligent, audience-led media planning — defining how data assets are identified, built, governed, and activated to drive measurable client outcomes. You'll work across a dynamic mix of internal teams, external partners, and clients, bringing clarity and structure to complex data challenges.

If you're someone who gets genuinely excited about the evolving data landscape, loves translating technical complexity into client-ready storytelling, and wants to be part of building something meaningful with WPP's Open platform — this role is for you.

• Define audience frameworks across foundational, enrichment, and activation layers; identify the right signals and data sources to answer real business questions
• Develop audience strategies and insights, overseeing the translation of audience logic into activation in partnership with planning, activation, and analytics teams
• Assess client data maturity, identify gaps, and surface enrichment opportunities to improve addressability, measurement, and outcomes
• Support privacy-safe data collaboration and clean room strategies (e.g., InfoSum), translating client business questions into compliant use cases for audience insights and activation
• Stay ahead of industry trends and provide thought leadership that positions WPP Media as a leading voice in data strategy

• Build, taxonomize, and syndicate audiences across relevant platforms — ensuring audience definitions, dependencies, and usage guidance are clear and repeatable
• Analyze and present audience-level reporting (e.g., overlaps, correlations, affinity/indexing) within DMP/CDP platforms to inform planning and optimization
• Proactively monitor audience onboarding and syndication health (e.g., match rates), communicating risks and remediation paths to reduce data loss
• Own audience integration documentation and operational guidance to enable consistent cross-functional execution

• Become a deep product expert on WPP Open and our broader suite of data tools and platforms
• Support the growth of the WPP Open platform by driving adoption of our data assets and capabilities with clients and internal teams
• Clearly communicate technical capabilities to both internal stakeholders and external audiences

• Build strong, trusted relationships across media, analytics, technology, and commercial teams in a matrixed environment
• Manage a high volume of tasks and priorities with confidence and clarity
• Develop and maintain strong partnerships with external data vendors and technology partners

• Significant experience in data strategy, audience strategy, martech/adtech, or a closely related field — ideally within a media agency, consultancy, or platform environment
• Demonstrated ability to develop audience-first strategies using 1P/2P/3P data and translate strategy into activation-ready audience logic
• Experience creating audience insights and reporting within audience management platforms (e.g., DMP/CDP)
• Familiarity with identity, data onboarding/syndication concepts, and operational metrics like match rates
• Working knowledge of the adtech/martech ecosystem and how platforms support data strategy execution
• Familiarity with audience modeling approaches including lookalikes, propensity models, value-based segmentation, and suppression
• Strong client-facing communication skills — able to make complex concepts clear for both technical and non-technical audiences
• A genuine curiosity and commitment to continuous learning in a fast-moving industry

• Experience driving platform adoption in a SaaS/PaaS environment and supporting enablement programs
• Experience designing data strategies for large, complex, multi-brand, or multinational advertisers (CPG a plus)
• Familiarity with the GroupM/WPP ecosystem, data platforms, and ways of working