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Associate Media Director

Chicago

As an Associate Media Director, you are a strategic leader passionate about digital media, investment strategy, and emerging trends. You thrive on identifying high-impact opportunities and driving innovative, performance-driven digital campaigns. Your expertise in digital investment ensures seamless execution, strong vendor partnerships, and ongoing optimization to maximize results for clients. You are a mentor and leader, guiding a team to excel while maintaining a deep understanding of industry advancements and best practices.

Our new hires & employees are the future of our organization, and we want to set you up for long-term success. In an effort to do so, we expect our team to work from an office a minimum of 3 days a week.

You Will:

  • Lead the development, execution, and management of digital media investment strategies aligned with client objectives.
  • Build strong client relationships while up-selling and cross-selling to organically grow business.
  • Oversee investment team recommendations, ensuring data-driven, strategic rationale and supporting documentation.
  • Work with discipline leads to identify opportunities to lead social, search, or syndication strategy that influence creative production.
  • Stay ahead of industry trends, evaluating new opportunities and emerging platforms to enhance media strategy.
  • Partner with insight, planning, and marketing science teams to leverage data-driven customer insights.
  • Manage third-party vendors and contractors to evaluate new opportunities on an ongoing basis.
  • Develop and mentor a team, fostering an environment of learning, growth, and excellence in execution.

You Have:

  • 7+ years of experience in online media planning and investment, search, and social experience.
  • 2+ years in a leadership or supervisory role, with experience managing a team.
  • Expertise in integrated digital marketing strategies across CTV, social media, standard digital channels, and programmatic platforms.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, with a keen eye for identifying optimization opportunities.
  • Excellent communication, organizational, and interpersonal skills to lead teams and collaborate across disciplines.

What We Offer:

  • Global maternity and parental leave 
  • Competitive benefits packages 
  • Vacation, compassionate leave, wellness days, and flex days 
  • Access to online services for families and new parents
  • Early Dismissal Friday’s (off at 3:00 PM local time every Friday) 
  • Diversity and Inclusion Board with 13 affinity groups 
  • Internal learning and development programs 
  • Enterprise-wide employee discounts
We continually review ranges to address skills, experience and markets. Base salaries are determined during our interview process, by assessing a number of factors that include, but aren’t limited to, a candidate’s experience and skills relative to the scope and responsibilities of the position. For current CM employees, tenure will also be a consideration.

Salary Range

$110,000 - $140,000 USD

Critical Mass is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We do not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. If you are an individual with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please reach out to accommodations@criticalmass.com.

We are committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within our candidate pools. 

The Critical Mass Talent Acquisition team will only communicate from email addresses that use the URLs criticalmass.com and us.greenhouse-mail.io. We will not use apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Google Hangouts for communicating with you. We will never ask you to send us money, technology, or anything else to work for our company. If you believe you are the victim of a scam, please review your local government consumer protections guidance and reach out to them directly.

If U.S. based: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams#avoid
If Canada based: https://www.canada.ca/en/services/finance/consumer-affairs.html
If U.K. based: https://www.gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights
If Costa Rica based: https://www.consumo.go.cr/educacion_consumidor/consejos_practicos.aspx 

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