Associate Director, Paid Search / Paid Media

Impression Digital Limited; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 52,000 - 62,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading digital marketing agency in the UK seeks an ambitious Associate Director, Paid Search to enhance their Paid Search strategy and manage flagship accounts. You will guide teams, ensuring high-quality outcomes while driving commercial growth. Candidates must display strategic leadership skills and the ability to innovate in digital marketing. This role offers a competitive salary and values work-life balance through flexible work options.

Benefits

Private medical insurance

Flexible working options

28 days annual leave

Enhanced sick pay

Qualifications

• Demonstrated team leadership experience in Paid Search.
• Proven ability to challenge established best practices.
• Excellent storytelling with complex data insights.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategy for flagship client accounts.
• Drive commercial performance and growth plans.
• Ensure quality and performance of client campaigns.

Skills

Innovation

Commercial Storytelling

Adaptive Resilience

Cross-Channel Fluency

Ownership and accountability

Job description

Impression Digital

Impression is a multi-award winning, high growth digital marketing agency based in Nottingham, London and Manchester.

Our agency wouldn’t be what it is today without our incredible people. Our diverse team encompasses expertise across the digital landscape which enables us to accelerate change and results, driving business growth faster. Our collaborative, creative and inclusive culture helps build our reputation as a leading digital employer and we are committed to nurturing and developing people to their full potential.

We're looking for an ambitious Associate Director, Paid Search / Paid Media to join the team and help us continue to deliver award-winning results for our clients.

Impression were recently ranked fourth in UK's Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing (medium‑size 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 talent to grow with us and there is ample opportunity for you 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®.

The Role

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 is responsible for a portfolio of flagship client accounts.

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 Search 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 its 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:

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

• Account Leadership: Assume full accountability for flagship client partnerships, navigating conflicting stakeholder priorities to secure long‑term retention and investment.
• 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.
• Integrated Solutions: Work collaboratively with other channel owners (Paid Social, SEO, Programmatic) to produce cohesive and experimentation‑led recommendations to improve performance across the Paid Media spectrum.
• Risk Management: Proactively identify "unspoken" risks or stagnation points in a client’s strategy, approaching them with pre‑formatted solutions that require cross‑service integration or technical innovation.
• 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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• Coaching & Development: Adopt a coaching‑first mindset for your team, guiding them to solve complex problems independently rather than providing answers.
• Strategic Proofing: Provide high‑level strategic proofing on complex accounts and hold the wider team to account on technical execution.
• Operational Support: Support the department with responsibilities including resourcing, recruitment, process improvement, and training.

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

What makes us different?

We are proud to be listed on the "Flexa 100" most flexible companies to work for and to be officially recognised as a Great Place to Work®. Alongside our amazing culture, here's what else makes us stand out as a great employer:

• Flexible, hybrid working options - as per ways of working charter
• 4.5 day working week
• Private medical insurance with access to EAP
• Impression funded specialist therapy sessions, up to 6 sessions where Impression funds 50% of the cost
• Enhanced sick pay
• Access to OpenUp, a virtual therapy platform
• Enhanced parental leave
• 28 days annual leave, plus bank holiday
• Life leave – when something unexpected happens in your life and you need some paid leave
• Pregnancy loss and parental bereavement leave
• Compassionate leave
• Eye‑care vouchers
• Opportunity to save on and spread the cost of new tech through Techscheme
• Travel to work scheme
• Railcard salary sacrifice scheme
• Budget for books, tools and software
• A full social calendar
• Summer and Christmas party (off‑site)
• Chance to attend national and international conferences
• Top Apple equipment to use at work
• Savings on bikes and accessories through Cyclescheme
• Contributory pension scheme
• The usual agency stuff – office dogs, drinks fridge, ping pong and foosball, tea and coffee and office snacks

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.