Director, Media Planning

About the Role

Mass Culture treats paid media as a single, orchestrated growth system, not a set of channels running in isolation. The Director, Media Planning owns the architecture behind that system: the cross-channel plan that connects paid social, paid search, CTV, retail media, and emerging platforms to a client's real business goals, margins, and growth stage.

This is a strategy-first role focused on planning and optimizing media execution. You will build the media plans clients act on, defend the logic behind budget allocation across channels, and make sure up-funnel and down-funnel investment work together instead of competing for the same dollar. You will stay close enough to the campaigns themselves to know when a plan needs to change, and why, and you will be the one to change it.

You will say what you expect each dollar to do before you spend it, define in advance what would make you move it, and come back to every allocation decision to say whether it worked. That is a higher bar than most agencies hold themselves to, and it is why clients trust us with the whole mix instead of one channel.

You will plan inside a proprietary platform. Channel budgets and line items, monthly pacing, KPI targets, market splits, and a surplus ledger that records the rationale behind every dollar that moves. You will co-own the planning surfaces of that product alongside agency leadership. What a plan should capture, and what we should be able to model before committing a budget.

Responsibilities:

Media Strategy & Planning

• Build full-funnel, cross-channel media plans that tie budget allocation, channel mix, and pacing directly to each client's revenue, margin, and growth targets.
• Define the role each channel plays in the plan, whether that is reach, demand capture, retention, or proof, before arguing its number.
• Own the media mix model for assigned accounts: determine how up-funnel investment (CTV, paid social awareness, emerging platforms) and down-funnel investment (paid search, retargeting, retail media) should work together, and adjust as performance and market conditions shift.
• Translate client business objectives into measurable media plans, KPIs, and testing roadmaps.
• Lead media planning sessions with clients, presenting the strategic rationale behind channel and budget decisions, not just the numbers.

The Allocation Argument

• Set reallocation triggers up front: the conditions under which money moves, agreed in collaboration with the client. 
• Defend the plan without inflating it. Say what we don't know. And call out risks and assumptions. 
• Hold the up-funnel line. The hardest budget to defend is the one that doesn't convert this week. Build that case in advance, with evidence from the analytics team. 
• Grade our own allocations. Revisit every significant allocation decision against what actually happened, and say plainly when we got it right and when we got it wrong. 

Cross-Channel Orchestration

• Partner with channel leads across paid social, paid search, CTV, and retail media to ensure each channel's execution ladders up to one plan.
• Identify where channels are working against each other, where budget is misallocated, and where a mixed media stack would reduce risk and capture more attention.
• Use the agency's forecasting and planning models to show clients how channels interact, not just how each performs on its own.

In-Flight Budget Management

• Own budget pacing across assigned accounts. Know where every account stands against plan, and act before a month closes badly rather than explaining it afterward.
• Own reallocation end to end. When a channel underdelivers, you decide where the money goes, and the rationale gets written down at the moment of the decision. 
• Maintain the surplus ledger for your accounts: what moved, from where, to where, and why.

Measurement Partnership

• Define the business questions worth testing and commission the work from the analytics team: incrementality tests, geo experiments, holdouts, and media mix experiments. 
• Turn measurement findings into budget decisions. A test that changes no allocation was either the wrong test or the wrong response.
• Work to the agency's measurement standards rather than a parallel set. One definition of a metric, agency-wide.

Client Leadership

• Serve as a senior strategic voice in client conversations, leading planning sessions and budget reviews with clarity and a clear point of view.
• Partner with Account Strategists in QBRs, owning the media plan and the investment narrative while they own the relationship.
• Translate performance data into business recommendations focused on revenue, margin, and efficiency, not platform vanity metrics.
• Act as an escalation point for planning and strategy questions on assigned accounts.

Platform & Product Partnership

• Co-own the planning surfaces of the Mass Culture client portal with agency leadership: what a media plan captures, how reallocation is recorded, and what we should be able to model before committing a budget.
• Build in the platform directly. You will construct plans, pacing views, and budget structures yourself rather than handing a spreadsheet to someone else.

Team & Growth

• Plan our most complex accounts personally, and build and lead the planning team behind them as the book grows.
• Set the standard for what a Mass Culture media plan looks like, and coach strategists and channel leads to it.
• Contribute media planning expertise to new business pitches and client onboarding.

Tools, Automation & AI

• Use media mix modeling, forecasting, and reporting tools to build plans grounded in data, not instinct.
• Incorporate AI tools into planning and analysis workflows to sharpen forecasting and surface patterns faster. AI should make good planners better, not replace their judgment.
• Stay current on new platforms, ad formats, and measurement approaches, and bring what's relevant to clients before they ask.

What We're Looking For

Required

• 10+ years of media planning or cross-channel strategy experience, ideally within a performance-driven or growth marketing agency.
• Proven ability to build media plans that connect budget allocation across paid social, paid search, CTV, and other channels to business outcomes, not just channel-level KPIs.
• Experience planning and managing budgets from small test allocations through multi-million-dollar annual books.
• Strong command of media mix modeling, incrementality testing, and cross-channel attribution. Enough to commission the right test and interrogate the result, whether or not you run it yourself.
• Fluency in direct-response economics: CAC, LTV, contribution margin, and the difference between blended and incremental efficiency.
• Track record leading senior client conversations and defending strategic recommendations under scrutiny.
• A plan you got wrong, and what you changed because of it. We will ask.
• Practical experience incorporating AI tools into planning, forecasting, or analytical workflows.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to connect media strategy to revenue and margin.
• Agency environment experience required.

Nice to Have

• Experience with retail media platforms (Amazon, Walmart Connect, Instacart Ads) as part of a broader media mix.
• Experience building or specifying planning and forecasting tools rather than only using them.
• Experience managing or mentoring media planners.

Why Mass Culture

We are not a traditional agency. We work inside our clients' businesses, connect media strategy to real commercial outcomes, and treat growth as a system. Our sister company, Brains, is a world-class branding agency, and that relationship is real. We love brand as much as we love performance.

No hacking. No smoke and mirrors. Real growth.

Compensation:

Salary - $130,000-$160,000 USD

Mass Culture on Inclusion:
We hire great people from a wide breadth of backgrounds, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it makes our work, our company and our communities stronger. Mass Culture is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, national origin or any other federal, state or local protected class.