Director of Media Strategy & Activation (Paid Media)

Responsibilities
Unified Media Strategy. Build and own Dropbox's media strategy across brand and performance. Set the annual and quarterly investment thesis, define the channel portfolio, and make the tradeoff decisions on where spend moves and why.

Total Budget Ownership. Manage Dropbox's full media investment across paid search, paid social, programmatic, display, video, mobile, affiliate, and brand channels. Own planning, forecasting, pacing, and in-quarter reallocation against efficiency and growth targets.

Brand and Performance Integration. Align reach, frequency, creative strategy, and channel mix so brand and performance investment reinforce each other rather than compete. Partner closely with the Brand organization, which owns brand positioning and creative direction, to translate brand strategy into media execution.

Operating Model and Partnerships. Design and run the right mix of in-house capability and agency partnership. Own agency relationships, and build the internal muscle where needed.

AI-Enabled Media Operations. Develop and execute a point of view on where agentic and AI-enabled workflows belong in the media stack — creative production and testing velocity, audience modeling, budget allocation, bid strategy, reporting, and quality control. Make deliberate decisions about where machine judgment outperforms human judgment, and where it does not.

Connect Media to Revenue. Partner with Product Growth, Sales, and Marketing Data Science to connect media signals to downstream outcomes — activation, conversion, product-qualified leads, expansion, and retention. Build the acquisition layer of a unified self-serve and sales-assisted revenue system.

Measurement Rigor. Partner with Marketing Data Science on attribution, incrementality testing, and media mix modeling. Be a sophisticated consumer and challenger of measurement methodology, and translate complex performance tradeoffs into crisp, executive-ready recommendations.

Team Leadership. Lead and grow a team of channel and brand media leaders. Build clarity on what each person owns, how they are measured, and how their work ladders to revenue.

Requirements
10+ years in media, performance marketing, or digital marketing with increasing scope and leadership responsibility, at a high-growth B2B and/or B2C company
4+ years leading teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and org design
Deep, hands-on expertise across paid channels — search, paid social, programmatic, display, video, mobile — including planning, forecasting, budget pacing, audience design, and performance management
Experience owning brand media alongside performance media, with working knowledge of brand lift measurement, reach and frequency planning, and creative performance optimization
Track record managing significant media budgets with clear, demonstrated impact on acquisition efficiency, pipeline, or revenue
Experience managing agency and vendor ecosystems — scoping, selecting, and holding partners accountable — and building in-house capability where it creates advantage
Strong analytical fluency: attribution approaches, incrementality testing, MMM/MTA concepts, and unit economics (CAC, LTV, payback)
Experience marketing across self-serve, product-led, and sales-assisted motions, and adapting programs across consumer, SMB, and mid-market segments
Excellent executive communication: you can turn a complicated performance picture into a clear recommendation and defend it
Preferred Qualifications
Agency and in-house background. You built your craft agency-side and then brought that capability in-house at a technology or high-growth company. You have operated on both sides of the partnership.

AI and agentic media workflows. Demonstrated use of AI-enabled workflows in a media context — creative generation and testing, audience modeling, automated reporting, budget or bid optimization — with a clear view of where these tools create leverage and where they introduce risk. Candidates with less conventional experience will be strongly considered if they spike here.

Experience building a media strategy or media planning function

Familiarity with modern martech and adtech stacks: CDPs, marketing automation, attribution platforms, tagging and data governance

Experience navigating measurement disruption — privacy changes, cookie deprecation, first-party data strategy

Multi-product portfolio experience, including cross-sell and attach motions

International or EMEA media experience

Durable Skills
AI fluency means using these tools to amplify human judgment, not replace it. We believe people with these skills will thrive as work and technology continue to evolve:

Awareness: Understand yourself and others.
Judgment: Evaluate information and make decisions in complex situations.
Adaptability: Learn, adjust, and stay effective through change.
Connection: Communicate, collaborate, and build trust.
To learn more about why these skills matter and what the data shows about thriving through change, read this blog post from our Chief People Officer, Melanie Rosenwasser.

Compensation
US Zone 1

This role is not available in Zone 1

US Zone 2
$205,800—$278,400 USD
US Zone 3
$182,900—$247,500 USD

Skills Required
10+ years in media, performance marketing, or digital marketing at a high-growth B2B and/or B2C company
4+ years leading teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and org design
Deep hands-on expertise across paid channels: search, paid social, programmatic, display, video, mobile (planning, forecasting, pacing, audience design, performance management)
Experience owning brand media alongside performance media, with knowledge of brand lift, reach and frequency planning, and creative performance optimization
Track record managing significant media budgets with measurable impact on acquisition efficiency, pipeline, or revenue
Experience managing agency and vendor ecosystems and building in-house capability where advantageous
Strong analytical fluency: attribution approaches, incrementality testing, MMM/MTA concepts, and unit economics (CAC, LTV, payback)
Experience marketing across self-serve, product-led, and sales-assisted motions and across consumer, SMB, and mid-market segments
Excellent executive communication: distill complex performance into clear recommendations and defend them
Agency and in-house background (built craft agency-side and brought capability in-house)
Demonstrated use of AI-enabled media workflows: creative generation/testing, audience modeling, automated reporting, budget/bid optimization
Experience building a media strategy or media planning function
Familiarity with modern martech and adtech stacks: CDPs, marketing automation, attribution platforms, tagging and data governance
Experience navigating measurement disruption: privacy changes, cookie deprecation, first-party data strategy
Multi-product portfolio experience including cross-sell and attach motions
International or EMEA media experience