Director, Audience Activation & New Business Growth

NielsenIQ; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 118,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare plan

HSA & FSA

Life insurance

401(k) matching

Disability insurance

Tuition reimbursement

PTO & holidays

Flexible work

Volunteer time off

Job summary

MRI-Simmons, a joint venture majority owned by NIQ, is seeking a Director, Audience Activation to lead sales initiatives with agencies and brands in the Advanced Advertising space from our New York office. This role focuses on data enrichment and activation, negotiating contracts, and growing our presence with agency holding companies.

The ideal candidate has 5–10+ years in sales or business development in ad tech, a strong industry network, and a proven track record of driving audience

Qualifications

• 5–10+ years of experience in sales or business development within advanced advertising, programmatic, addressable, data enablement, audience data, or ad tech
• Proven success driving audience activation initiatives within agencies or brands
• Strong ad tech industry network across agency stakeholders, including programmatic, activation, investment, and digital teams
• Deep understanding of the advanced advertising, programmatic activation, and audience data ecosystem, including planning/insights, activation, and measurement/attribution solutions for digital video and CTV
• Demonstrated ability to communicate the value of audience and data‑driven solutions in a clear, compelling way
• Experience applying syndicated audience data to activation, planning, and partnership opportunities preferred
• Exceptional relationship management and executive‑level communication skills
• Strong negotiation skills with experience navigating complex commercial agreements
• Highly collaborative, proactive, and self‑directed
• Consultative, self-directed seller and evanlis...

Responsibilities

• Identify, develop, drive new business and upsell existing opportunities focused on audience activation, enrichment and data enablement
• Manage end‑to‑end customer engagement, including strategy, discussions, proposal and presentations development, negotiation, and contracts where necessary
• Own commercial discussions and manage deal terms and conditions in partnership with internal stakeholders to ensure audiences meet customer needs to drive utilizations
• Leverage strong, preferably existing, industry relationships across advertising and media agencies, and at times brands, and ad tech partners, with a strong focus on stakeholders in programmatic, digital, video, investment, and account teams
• Lead advanced advertising, audience activation, and other data‑driven proposals and presentations that clearly articulate the value of MRI‑Simmons audience intelligence
• Act as a trusted advisor to customers by aligning MRI‑Simmons audience solutions to customer business, media, and campaign activation objectives
• Requires approximately 25% travel; in-agency presence expected.
• Partner closely with Commercial, Marketing, Operations and Product teams to provide client feedback and input that informs audience development and utilization prioritization
• Support the development of new data enablement and activation initiatives, partnerships, and go‑to‑market strategies
• Serve as a subject matter expert for advanced advertising and audience-based activation, use cases, both external with customers and internal guiding sales colleagues on cross-team opportunities
• Coordinate outreach and engagement where needed with internal sales colleagues across all verticals
• Manage internal sales and audience revenue tracking processes; ensure tracking sheets, audience taxonomies, andCRM accuracy
• Support revenue collection team where necessary, aligning communication with all stakeholders
• Collaborate with Operations and Account Management teams when needed define data, technical, and delivery requirements
• Ensure client reporting requirements contractual obligations are met.

Skills

Sales/BD in ad tech

Audience activation

Ad tech network

Programmatic activation

Communication skills

Syndicated data experience

Relationship management

Negotiation

Collaborative selling

Consultative selling

Job description

MRI-Simmons, a joint venture majority owned by NIQ, is seeking a Director, Audience Activation to lead sales initiatives with agencies and brands in the Advanced Advertising space from our New York office. This role focuses on data enrichment and activation, negotiating contracts, and growing our presence with agency holding companies.

The ideal candidate has 5–10+ years in sales or business development in ad tech, a strong industry network, and a proven track record of driving audience