Paid Social Director

POSITION DESCRIPTION

PAID SOCIAL DIRECTOR

Purpose: 

The Paid Social Director is responsible for leading Thoughtful’s paid social capability across strategy, execution, innovation, and commercial impact. This role ensures paid social (primarily Meta, with a strong command of TikTok, Pinterest, and other major platforms) drives scalable growth for ecommerce-focused clients, while evolving Thoughtful’s offering, standards, and reputation in the market.

The role blends deep channel expertise with leadership, client influence, and commercial accountability - acting as a senior strategic partner to clients and a key contributor to agency growth.

Key Responsibilities:

Paid Social Strategy & Channel Leadership

• Own and evolve Thoughtful’s paid social strategy across Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, and all other major platforms, with a strong ecommerce and performance lens.


• Define best-practice frameworks for account structure, creative testing, media scaling, and measurement.


• Lead strategic planning for key Tier 1 ecommerce clients, ensuring paid social aligns with broader growth objectives.


• Partner with the Chief Growth Officer to shape paid social as a core driver of agency differentiation and growth.

Client Leadership & Commercial Impact

• Act as senior strategic lead on nominated Tier 1 client accounts, providing clear, confident counsel on growth opportunities.


• Lead paid social components of QBRs, growth roadmaps, and performance reviews.


• Identify and support upsell opportunities (creative testing, CRO, new platforms, incrementality testing).


• Ensure paid social performance directly contributes to client retention, satisfaction, and commercial outcomes.

Team Leadership & Capability Building

• Lead, mentor and develop the paid social team, building depth across strategy, execution, and optimisation.


• Set clear standards, expectations, and development pathways for Paid Social Managers and Specialists.


• Support the Performance Director and Head of Ops with resourcing, workflow planning, and capability scaling.


• Foster a high-performance, curious, and test-and-learn culture within the team.

Innovation, Testing & Platform Leadership

• Stay ahead of platform changes, ecommerce trends, and privacy/measurement shifts.


• Design and oversee structured testing frameworks across creative, audiences, formats, and bidding strategies.


• Build strong relationships with platforms and publishers, ensuring early access to betas and innovations.


• Collaborate with Creative and Strategy teams to evolve paid social creative thinking and performance storytelling.

Data, Measurement & Thoughtful Index

• Champion data-led decision making, ensuring paid social performance is clearly measured and communicated.


• Leverage Thoughtful Index and internal reporting frameworks to articulate impact beyond ROAS alone.


• Support experimentation around incrementality, MMM inputs, and advanced attribution where relevant.

Qualifications and Experience:

• 7-10 years experience in paid social / performance marketing within an ecommerce-focused agency.


• Extensive expertise leading Meta-first growth strategies for DTC or ecommerce brands at scale, and comprehensive experience across all major paid social platforms such as TikTok, Pinterest and Reddit.


• Demonstrated leadership experience managing and developing high-performing paid social teams.


• Strong commercial acumen with experience influencing client growth, retention, and upsell.


• Experience working with complex ecommerce setups (catalogues, feeds, creative volume, lifecycle marketing).


• Tertiary qualification in Marketing, Business, or related discipline preferred.

Skills and Competencies:

• Deep expertise across all major paid social channels (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, etc.), with an emphasis on Meta, and a strong understanding of all key platforms to drive strategy, diagnose performance, and manage team execution.


• Strong strategic thinker with the ability to translate performance data into clear growth narratives.


• Confident client communicator, able to influence senior stakeholders.


• Commercially minded, balancing performance outcomes with profitability and scalability.


• Collaborative leader who thrives in cross-functional environments.


• Curious, adaptive, and forward-thinking in a fast-evolving media landscape.


• Alignment with core company values.

Key Relationships:

• Internal: 

Chief Growth Officer

Performance Director

Performance Account Director

Leadership Team

Head of Operations

Creative & Strategy Teams

• External

Clients

Platform Partners (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest)

Publishers and Strategic Technology Partners

Measures of Success:

• Paid social channels consistently deliver strong, scalable performance for ecommerce clients.


• High client satisfaction, retention, and trust at a senior stakeholder level.


• Clear growth in paid social capability, team confidence, and strategic maturity.


• Successful adoption of new platforms, formats, and testing methodologies.


• Contribution to agency revenue growth through upsell and retention.


• Paid social recognition internally and externally as a core Thoughtful strength.