Senior Product Manager (Media)

Carwow; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

Competitive salary

Matched pension contributions

Share options

Bupa Private Healthcare

Life Assurance

Monthly coaching sessions

Holiday enhancements

Job summary

Carwow is seeking a Product Manager for retail media in the UK. You will own the product direction for sponsored ad products, collaborate with engineers, designers, and commercial teams, and drive revenue through smarter targeting and AI-powered features.

This role requires strong stakeholder management and data-driven decision making. You will partner with advertising partners to define roadmaps, test opportunities, and ship measurable improvements, while balancing commercial goals with user

Qualifications

• Proven retail media experience is a prerequisite: you have built or owned sponsored ads, onsite media or audience products at a marketplace, retailer or ad tech business.
• 5+ years of product management experience, with evidence of growing advertising revenue or advertiser performance.
• Technically strong: you understand ad serving, targeting, auction and pricing mechanics, APIs and tracking, and can hold a credible conversation with engineers about architecture and trade-offs.
• Comfortable with data: you interrogate performance data yourself, design your own tests, and form your own hypotheses rather than waiting for analysis to land in your inbox.
• Great stakeholder skills: you build trust with commercial teams, technical partners, advertisers and senior leaders, push back when needed, and come with solutions rather than problems.
• Clear written and verbal communication; you can explain a complex trade-off simply and bring people with you.

Responsibilities

• Set the product direction for Carwow's retail media products, defining what we build, in what order, and why.
• Lead discovery with advertisers and internal teams: interviews, campaign data and marketplace analysis, to build a precise understanding of where we can add the most value.
• Identify and test opportunities to bring AI into our advertising products: smarter targeting, relevancy and recommendations that actually change results.
• Work in partnership with the Technical Engineering Manager and Designer, and collaborate with the engineers in your team, to ship well-scoped solutions with clear success metrics.
• Manage the backlog with commercial awareness, prioritising work that drives revenue, advertiser performance and consumer relevance, not just activity.

Skills

Retail media

Product management

Advertising revenue

Data analysis

Stakeholder management

Communication

Tools

Ad serving platforms

APIs

Tracking

AI tools

Job description

OUR MISSION

To become the car-changing destination of choice. By combining technology, media and deep automotive expertise, we've turned how people buy, sell, advertise and lease cars on its head.

What started as a simple reviews site is now one of the largest online car-changing destinations in Europe. Last year alone we grew over 50% with nearly £3bn worth of cars bought on site, while £1.8bn of cars were listed for sale through our Sell My Car service.

In 2024 we went big and acquired Autovia - creators of AutoExpress and Evo magazines - doubling our audience overnight. Together we now have one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world with almost 10m subscribers and over 1.1 billion annual views, while we sell 1.2 million print copies of our magazines and have an annual web content reach over 350million.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Millions of people come to Carwow when they are ready to change their car. That is some of the highest-intent automotive audience in the UK, and it makes Carwow one of the most valuable places for dealers and manufacturers to reach buyers at the moment of decision. Retail media is how we turn that intent into revenue, for our partners and for the business.

We have built the foundations: sponsored placements across the buying journey, a growing media and audience offering, and commercial products for dealers and manufacturers. Demand is ahead of what we can currently serve. If we can make our advertising products smarter, more relevant and easier to buy, we grow revenue for partners while keeping the experience useful for the consumer. That balance is the job.

This role is the product voice for retail media: setting the direction for what we build and working day to day with engineering, design, data and commercial teams to build it.

This is also a moment where AI changes what's possible. Advertisers want smarter targeting, better recommendations on where to spend, and proof of what worked. We want to build those things. The PM in this role will need the curiosity to explore what that could look like, and the rigour to distinguish genuine value from noise.

If you know retail media inside out, want to shape a fast-growing revenue line, and build things with a direct line to commercial outcomes, this is it.

WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING

• Product Strategy & Execution:
  • Set the product direction for Carwow's retail media products, defining what we build, in what order, and why
  • Lead discovery with advertisers and internal teams: interviews, campaign data and marketplace analysis, to build a precise understanding of where we can add the most value
  • Identify and test opportunities to bring AI into our advertising products: smarter targeting, relevancy and recommendations that actually change results Work in partnership with the Technical Engineering Manager and Designer, and collaborate with the engineers in your team, to ship well-scoped solutions with clear success metrics
  • Manage the backlog with commercial awareness, prioritising work that drives revenue, advertiser performance and consumer relevance, not just activity
• Technical & Data Partnership:
  • Work closely with engineers on how ads are served, targeted, priced and measured, and make sound trade-offs between build, buy and integrate
  • Own measurement: run controlled tests so every new placement or format proves its revenue impact without harming the consumer experience
  • Use data directly, interrogating campaign and marketplace performance to guide decisions
• Cross-functional Leadership:
  • Work across product, engineering, commercial, campaign operations and marketing to align on priorities and ship coherently
  • Communicate strategy and trade-offs clearly to leadership and stakeholders, written as well as verbal
  • Support the commercial team in partner conversations where product context matters: capability deep-dives, roadmap discussions, strategic accounts

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• Proven retail media experience is a prerequisite: you have built or owned sponsored ads, onsite media or audience products at a marketplace, retailer or ad tech business, and you know how the industry works
• 5+ years of product management experience, with evidence of growing advertising revenue or advertiser performance
• Technically strong: you understand ad serving, targeting, auction and pricing mechanics, APIs and tracking, and can hold a credible conversation with engineers about architecture and trade-offs
• Comfortable with data: you interrogate performance data yourself, design your own tests, and form your own hypotheses rather than waiting for analysis to land in your inbox
• Great stakeholder skills: you build trust with commercial teams, technical partners, advertisers and senior leaders, push back when needed, and come with solutions rather than problems
• Clear written and verbal communication; you can explain a complex trade-off simply and bring people with you

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience in automotive, marketplace or two-sided products
• Hands-on use of AI tools in your own work, and experience shipping AI-powered features
• Experience with ad serving platforms, offsite media or CRM monetisation Experience taking new products to market, including pricing, GTM planning and launch

INTERVIEW PROCESS

• Step 1: Talent Screening Call (30 min)
• Step 2: Hiring Manager Call: Experience (45 min)
• Step 3: Case Study (60 min + Task)
• Step 4: Values Interview (45 min)

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU

• Hybrid working
• Competitive salary to fund that dream holiday to Bali
• Matched pension contributions for a peaceful retirement
• Share options - when we thrive, so do you!
• Bupa Private Healthcare, for peace of mind, plus eyecare vouchers
• Life Assurance for (even more) peace of mind
• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill - our mental wellbeing partner
• Enhanced holiday package, plus Bank Holidays
  • 28 days annual leave
  • 1 day for your wedding
  • 1 day off when you move house - because moving is hard enough without work!
  • For your third year anniversary, get 30 days of annual leave per year
  • For your tenth year anniversary, get 35 days of annual leave per year
  • Option to buy 3 extra days of holiday per year
• Work from abroad for a month
• Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave, fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies
• Bubble childcare support and discounted nanny fees for little ones
• The latest tech (Macbook or Surface) to power your gif-sending talents
• Up to £500/€550 home office allowance for that massage chair you’ve been talking about
• Generous learning and development budget to help you master your craft
• Regular social events: tech lunches, coffee with the exec sessions, lunch 8 learns, book clubs, social events/anything else you pester us for
• Refer a friend, get paid. Repeat for infinite money

Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We know that diverse teams are strong teams, so we welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.