Associate Director: Paid Media

We are seeking an ambitious, enthusiastic, and highly experienced Paid Search leader to join our multi-award-winning agency. This pivotal role is a direct support to the Head of PPC and the Head of Paid Social and will be responsible for a portfolio of flagship client accounts.

SALARY: £50,900 (plus £6k for those living in the Greater London area)

See our: Impression's Benefits Booklet to find out more

The Role:

You will actively lead the strategy for larger or more complex, typically top-tier accounts, while contributing significantly to the continued development and growth of Impression’s Paid Media offering. This is an opportunity to transform challenges into technical solutions and commercial opportunities, and work alongside like-minded and supportive individuals within an agency that truly puts it’s people first.

Who are you?

Given the senior nature of this role, we are looking for candidates who can demonstrate established team leadership experience focused on strategic guidance and inspiration.

To be considered for the Associate Director, Paid Search role, you will need to demonstrate:

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Innovation : You proactively challenge established best practices and legacy processes, designing new, evidence-based methodologies that unlock performance gains where standard tactics have plateaued.

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Commercial Storytelling: You go beyond simply defining strategy; you expertly structure complex data and multi-channel insights into a persuasive story that links technical execution directly to the client's bottom line.

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Adaptive Resilience: You apply adaptive thinking strategically across team and client challenges, acting as a steadying influence to guide teams through complex circumstances with calm, focus, and clarity.

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Cross-Channel Fluency: You can speak to how other Paid Media channels contribute to meeting overall client goals. You lead decision-making when it comes to integrating Search with Social and Programmatic, compiling clear frameworks to bring clients on a growth journey.

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Ownership and accountability: You demonstrate accountability over the quality and performance of complex media accounts, acting as the definitive problem solver. You apply your technical expertise to resolve risks independently.

What will you be doing?

The Associate Director is the escalation point for all clients within their portfolio. You will act as the "Guardian of Quality" for the team, ensuring that every piece of work is treated with deep professional care.

Strategy & Client Growth

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Account Leadership: Assume full accountability for flagship client partnerships, navigating conflicting stakeholder priorities to secure long-term retention and investment.

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Performance Ownership: You will take full accountability for the commercial performance and trajectory of your portfolio. You are responsible for constructing detailed growth plans (12-month+), setting rigorous KPI frameworks, and tracking delivery against these targets to ensure we consistently drive commercial value and hold the team to account on results.

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Integrated Solutions: Work collaboratively with other channel owners (SEO, Programmatic) to produce cohesive and experimentation-led recommendations to improve performance across the Paid Media spectrum.

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Risk Management: Proactively identify 'unspoken' risks or stagnation points in a client’s strategy, approaching them with pre-formulated solutions that require cross-service integration or technical innovation.

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New Business: Contribute to the new business phase, including understanding briefs, producing pitch materials, and presenting to prospects to win new business.

Technical Innovation & Thought Leadership

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Challenging the Status Quo: Proactively challenge existing methodologies and "best practices" to elevate the standard of strategic output. You will spearhead complex technical and data-led solutions or scalable testing frameworks that directly address high-level business objectives.

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Future-Proofing: Apply forward-thinking consistently to anticipate industry trends, platform changes, and emerging risks (e.g., Google Ads updates, Privacy Sandbox, AI development), using this foresight to shape strategies.

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Internal Thought Leadership: Showcase Impression’s prowess as an industry leader by transforming your innovative solutions into case studies or new service products, elevating the technical standard of the entire department.

Leadership & People

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Coaching & Development: Adopt a coaching-first mindset for your team, guiding them to solve complex problems independently rather than providing answers.

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Strategic Proofing: Provide high-level strategic proofing on complex accounts and hold the wider team to account on technical execution.

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Operational Support: Support the department with responsibilities including resourcing, recruitment, process improvement, and training.

Flexible working at Impression without losing team connections We love the focus of deep work at home, but we value team connections just as much. That’s why we practice a hybrid model with a minimum of one purposeful Pulse Day in the office per week to catch up and collaborate. The Paid Team's Pulse Day is on Wednesdays.

Please note, this role is a hybrid role, in line with our flexible working policy. We look to hire candidates who are no more than a 90 minute journey away from our office locations to ensure your personal time is protected and that you're able to travel into the office when necessary.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We're listening, and we're learning...

We’re committed to embracing diversity and promoting equal opportunities, both within our teams and through the services we provide. But we know we still have work to do. Improving fairness – in our agency and our industry – is something we’re passionate about, and we’re committed to having the conversations, making the changes and helping other businesses to do the same.

We pledge to promote equal opportunities and, as per the Equality Act 2010, will not tolerate discrimination on the grounds of: gender, gender identity, marital status, sexual orientation, race, colour, nationality, religion, age, disability, caring responsibilities or beliefs. We’ll also make every effort to represent different genders, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds and sexualities at the events, panels and discussions we run.

Agencies

Strictly no recruitment agencies.

Impression was recently ranked fourth in the UK's Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing (medium-sized companies), and we continuously strive to ensure the best possible work-life balance for our team.

As a successful candidate, you will be given a clear progression path. We want rising talent to grow with us, and you'll have ample opportunity to progress to the next level.

We are also very proud to have been listed on the “Flexa 100” Most Flexible Companies to work for and to be officially recognised as a Great Place to Work®. We offer many benefits, including a 4.5-day working week, flexible hybrid working options, and enhanced leave, to name a few.