Media Budget & Operations Manager

Hybrid remote position

Job Overview

As the Media Budgets& Operations Manager, you play a key role in the media operations and billing competency within the agency. The core focus of the role is to support the media team in budget and billing management across key clients. This person is responsible for ensuring strict adherence to unique billing requirements of the agency and our various client partners. This role helps to create integrated team processes, improve accuracy, drive efficiency, and elevate communication between the media team, other key agency disciplines (finance, account, operations, etc.) and third-party vendors and agency partners.

Attributes & Skills

• Extreme attention to detail
• Collaborative, relationship builder – gains cooperation; skilled in virtual team management
• Adaptable – comfortable in ever-changing environments
• Time management, multi-tasking skills, and interpersonal skills
• Strong project management & organizational skills – ability to prioritize, multi-task and keep projects on schedule, with good quality control of output; ability to juggle many moving parts and obtain cooperation from numerous team members
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Strong work ethic – conscientious, diligent, and productive
• Problem solver – continuously seeking to improve upon existing processes/product
• Resourceful, self-starter – pro-active and takes initiative
• Leadership – confident in decision making and helping other team members; visible in meetings; not afraid to question or vocalize opinion
• Strong working knowledge of MS Office: Excel, Word and/or other project management platforms (MS Teams, Media Ocean, etc.)

Job Responsibilities

The job responsibilities for the Media Budget & Operations Manager lies in three key areas:  Budget & Billing Management, Media Operations, and Relationship Management

Budget & Billing Management:  Serves as the lead for all items related to Media Budgets and billing, providing core support to the media team, ensuring client budget stewardship and timely invoicing and payment for all client and 3rd party partners.

• Manages client budgets and corresponding budget documents ensuring all campaign dollars are accurately tracked, optimized, and shared with key parties involved in the business.
• Provides regular budget reporting to clients and partnering agency teams and manages ad-hoc budget related requests as needed.
• Confirms accuracy of work performed by all team members involved in billing process and helps to facilitate corrections and improvements as needed.
• Works with client, media, and finance teams to resolve questions and/or billing and invoice discrepancies in timely manner.
• Works closely with Media Buyers and Assistants to ensure vendors abide by required payment terms and due dates.
• Oversees internal quarterly billing audits to ensure payments across clients and various 3rd party vendors have been updated and closed within the internal finance system (Media Ocean)
• Ongoing review of billing process (invoicing, reconciliation, collection) with finance and media team to identify improvement opportunities.

Media Operations:  Serve as the central point of contact for Media operations within the agency, being the keeper and source for key documents, financial information, contracts, etc. Examples of responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Work with the Media Director and Finance to understand and manage all 3rd party vendor contracts related to systems, tools and outsourcing.  This includes costs, renewal dates, access, and usage volume.  Ensure overall agency optimization (costs vs. usage) related to 3rd party vendors.
• Maintain an understanding of project and client scopes to help manage hours reporting when needed.
• Become an expert in the agency’s Buy Management and Finance platform (Mediaocean) to aid team in usage, access needs, and opportunity to drive automation and efficiency in buy-flow process.
• Assist as needed in project management helping to hold the team to key deadlines, internal and external timelines, spec documentation management, etc.

Relationship Management: Serve as a key advocate for the team’s processes and approach to delivering against client and agency needs and deadlines. Examples of responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Serve as key point-of-contact for the THIRD EAR Finance team as it relates to all media billing and operational needs
• Manage relationships with primary 3rd party vendors as it relates to research tools, contracts, etc.
• Maintain relationships with key personnel across media and account leadership teams that play a contributing role in media billing.
• Serve as a partner to sister agencies by facilitating open communication and clarity on requests, deliverables, and other operational/budget related topics.

What Success Looks Like

The Media Budget & Operations Manager is successful when they are:

• Improving the speed and accuracy with which teams accomplish billing responsibilities due to improved process, systems, ways of working, etc.
• Accurate management and reporting of all client dollars and billable amounts.
• The quality of the work put out by the team improves from an accuracy and speed standpoint because they have clear timelines, responsibilities, and roles across billing management.
• Seamless collaboration and integration with the THIRD EAR Finance team
• The team sees a steady reduction in hours across certain tasks by increasing efficiencies (e.g., billing reconciliation, contract renewal periods, client and vendor invoice payments, etc.)

Qualifications

Minimum qualifications to be in this role are:

• 4+ years of relevant work experience
• Experience in the Media industry
• Excellent operational and project management, including the ability to manage diverse projects and multiple priorities under aggressive timelines and expectations.
• Advanced Excel skills, with experience creating formatted financial reports preferred.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Accounting, Finance, Mathematics, Statistics, or Marketing
• Proficiency utilizing Media Ocean or another platform similar such as Strata.
• Understanding of various advertising tools, platforms, and subscriptions (ComScore, Nielson, OMNI, SQAD, etc.)
• Client management experience

THIRD EAR offers a robust benefits package including health, dental, vision, company paid life and STD/LTD insurance, 401(k) matching, paid time off, parental leave, paid parking, annual wellness program, hybrid work schedule and Summer Fridays.

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