Media Buyer & Performance Analyst

Media Buyer & Performance Analyst

Location: Cape Town, hybrid (Workshop17 Newlands)

Employment type: Full-time, permanent

Compensation: Competitive, plus performance-based incentives

About the company

Our client is a fast-growing premium outdoor lighting brand, founded in South Africa. It is an 8-figure USD direct-to-consumer business, now scaling across the USA, UK, Australia, Canada and Europe, and building toward 9-figure annual revenue.

The role

You will own the day-to-day performance of the brand's Meta advertising, managing significant spend across multiple products and markets. You will also be the person who explains what is really driving growth: across acquisition, creative, conversion, customer behaviour and commercial results.

You will work closely with senior marketing leadership, two experienced Creative Strategists, a data partner and external paid-media partners.

What you'll do

Meta media buying

• Own day-to-day Meta performance across the South African and global accounts
• Decide when to scale, hold, reduce or restructure spend within agreed CPA, NCPA, MER and contribution targets
• Manage spend across multiple product CBOs and markets
• Understand the role each ad plays within a CBO and the wider customer journey, not just ad-level metrics
• Cut underperforming or fatigued ads with discipline, and graduate proven creative-test winners into scaling campaigns
• Keep improving account structure, efficiency and scaling strategy, and stay ahead of Meta platform changes

Performance analysis and diagnostics

• Monitor DTC performance across spend, revenue, contribution, MER, NCPA, conversion rate, AOV, traffic and product mix
• Diagnose whether a change comes from media, creative, landing pages, offers, seasonality, tracking or product mix
• Separate genuine performance issues from normal volatility
• Turn data into clear insight: what changed, why, and what to do next, and raise risks before anyone has to ask

Data, reporting and AI

• Work with the data partner to improve data accuracy, attribution and reporting across markets, products and channels
• Spot tracking, attribution and data discrepancies early
• Build automated monitoring and alerts that flag unusual changes in performance
• Use AI to speed up recurring analysis, anomaly detection and reporting

Creative performance insight

• Identify winning, declining and fatigued creatives and share clear insights with the Creative Strategists
• Make sure new creative tests get the right spend and data before conclusions are drawn
• Take part in Creative Sprints and feed learnings back into the creative testing system

Paid media oversight

• Oversee outsourced paid-media channels, including Google Ads, and hold partners to agreed commercial targets
• Make sure learnings across Meta, Google and other channels are shared, not siloed
• Help evaluate new paid-media platforms as the channel mix grows

What success looks like

• Meta spend scales while acquisition economics stay healthy
• Winning creatives are found and scaled quickly; declining ads are managed intelligently
• Performance issues are caught early, before they become expensive
• Leadership can clearly see what is driving DTC performance
• AI and automation cut the manual monitoring and reporting

You bring

• 3+ years of hands-on Meta Ads experience in DTC e-commerce
• Experience managing meaningful paid-media budgets and making independent scaling decisions
• A strong understanding of Meta campaign structures, ad funnels and creative testing
• Commercial instinct: you understand how media spend, CPA, MER, conversion rate, AOV, contribution and profitability connect
• Strong analytical ability and real curiosity about why performance changes
• Confidence across Shopify, Meta Ads Manager, analytics platforms and reporting dashboards
• A solid grasp of attribution and tracking fundamentals
• AI fluency: you already use AI tools, automation or agents in your workflow
• A structured, detail-oriented and proactive approach
• Clear communication with both creative and commercial teams

Strong advantages

• Managing Meta across multiple international markets
• Experience with high-spend DTC brands
• Familiarity with Google Ads, even if it wasn't your main channel
• Data visualisation, automated reporting, APIs, AI agents or workflow automation

• Real influence: work directly with senior leadership and shape how the marketing budget is deployed
• Serious scale: run Meta for an 8-figure USD international DTC brand building toward 9-figure revenue
• A strong team: two experienced Creative Strategists and a strong in-house marketing team
• Build something modern: help create a performance function that combines media buying, commercial analysis, data, automation and AI
• Real ownership: autonomy from day one in a fast-moving, globally ambitious business
• Earning potential: meaningful performance-based incentives tied to measurable results
• Flexible hybrid working from Workshop17 Newlands