Associate Director, Ad Operations & Programmatic Strategy

WebMD Ignite, a division of WebMD and Internet Brands, is the growth partner for healthcare organizations. We guide people to better health at all stages of their journey, from discovery to recovery. Our combination of leading brands in the industry—including WebMD, Medscape, Krames, PulsePoint, Vitals, The Wellness Network, Mercury Healthcare, and Healthwise—offers comprehensive solutions that engage individuals with timely, relevant messaging that optimizes experiences and outcomes, driving loyalty and lifetime value for our clients.

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The Associate Director, Ad Operations & Programmatic serves as the operational and strategic leader for a team of three programmatic traders managing approximately 150 active line items across two distinct sales models. This is a hands‑on leadership role: you are expected to be a working manager who steps into the trading seat as needed, while simultaneously developing your team’s capabilities, driving process excellence, and serving as the primary point of escalation for high-priority clients.

This role is also responsible for driving the team’s digital transformation by integrating AI-enabled workflows and automation to elevate our strategic output.

You will oversee the full lifecycle of both impression-based CPM package campaigns and spend-based managed budget campaigns, ensuring flawless execution, pacing accuracy, and consistent delivery against client goals. The role demands equal fluency in people leadership, platform operations, and strategic client thinking.

Team Leadership & Management

• Directly manage, mentor, and develop three programmatic traders, setting clear performance expectations and fostering a culture of accountability and growth.

• Serve as a working manager and backup trader; actively stepping in to manage line items, troubleshoot delivery issues, or support high-priority campaigns during peak periods or team absences.

• Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and skills-gap assessments; create individualized development plans for each team member.

• Lead daily and weekly team stand-ups to review pacing, flag issues, and prioritize workload across the full ~200 line item portfolio.

• Coordinate effectively across onshore and offshore resources to ensure continuity of campaign operations.

AI Strategy & Innovation

• Automation Roadmap & Implementation:
  Own the programmatic team’s automation roadmap. Proactively identify, evaluate, and integrate AI-driven tools, automation, and methodologies to streamline day-to-day operations and programmatic strategy.

• AI-Enabled Upskilling:
  Lead the team’s transition to AI-enabled workflows. Coach and upskill programmatic traders to adopt "AI-solution-forward" ways of working, ensuring the team is proficient in using AI for forecasting, reporting, and strategic insights.

• Workflow Re-engineering:
  Audit and re-engineer manual, recurring processes (e.g., campaign setup, tagging, trafficking) around automation and AI agents to reduce manual effort and increase throughput.

• Strategic Capability Development:
  Build and assist in the development of AI-enabled measurement, optimization, and reporting capabilities. Shift the team’s focus from execution-heavy tasks toward higher-value strategic output and AOR-style services.

Campaign Operations
- Impression-Based (Bundled CPM Packages)

• Oversee trafficking, QA, and optimization of bundled CPM package campaigns that follow standardized targeting templates and package definitions.

• Establish and maintain clear naming conventions, package taxonomies, and trafficking SOPs that enable consistent, scalable execution across the team.

• Monitor delivery pacing and performance, proactively identifying underperforming line items and directing optimization actions.

• Partner with the sales team to ensure package definitions are operationally feasible and clearly communicated at the point of sale.

Campaign Operations
- Spend-Based (Managed Budget Campaigns)

• Provide strategic oversight of spend-based campaigns, with particular attention to Baptist Health South Florida, which represents approximately 16% of spend and 22% lines under management in this revenue…