Senior Paid Media Specialist

About this role

Join the future of news

We’re on a mission to deliver riveting storytelling for all of America. At The Washington Post, you’ll help reinvent news. Our work is driven by a deep investigative spirit and enhanced by innovation to bring audiences closer to the stories that matter most.

About Our Team

The Washington Post is powered by the passion and talent of our people. It takes all of us to reinvent news. Beyond our award-winning Newsroom and Opinions teams, we work across many departments, including Brand & Events, Communications, Customer Care, Engineering & Product, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Marketing & Advertising, Print Operations, and Sales.

Why This Role Matters   The Washington Post is seeking a senior digital marketing specialist to join our subscriptions marketing team. The senior specialist will be expected to vigorously analyze data, brainstorm innovative strategic approaches to paid media to drive audience growth, and mentor team members. The ideal candidate has a deep working knowledge of digital marketing and paid media; is a citizen of social media and can explain the landscape and its evolving nature; has an understanding of politics and its key players; and can foster meaningful relationships with key stakeholders, including senior leadership, platform reps, brand marketing, editorial, and acquisition.

This role requires the core capabilities of paid media strategy, project management, peer mentorship, and creative, all rooted in digital marketing. The job will be to strategize and foster the execution of paid media campaigns, ensuring innovative creative output by guiding, informing, and testing creative production. To be successful, the position requires attention to detail, regular monitoring of data and performance, an eye for news readers’ behaviors, and the ability to optimize the paid media budget in order to drive overall subscription growth. Our team is looking for people who are excited to think about news content differently.

What Motivates You • A passion for and understanding of news, The Washington Post brand, our readers and potential subscribers.

• An interest and awareness of domestic and global current affairs.

• A highly collaborative team player who can manage urgent deliverables across multiple stakeholders.

• Be curious, data literate and digital first.

How You'll Support the Mission

The Skills and Experience You Bring • Regular collaboration with acquisition, engagement & retention, analytics, finance, engineering, and brand marketing teams to identify synergies for paid media support and scale growth opportunities against our key goals.

• Develop and execute full-funnel paid media strategies, driving reach and consideration across potential new subscribers to subscriber retention and re-engagement, ensuring a seamless journey from acquisition to long-term loyalty.

• Create and test paid media initiatives aimed at increasing habit-building behaviors among subscribers, driving repeat engagement with The Washington Post’s content and features.

• Further develop and own the paid media subscriber acquisition strategy, leveraging data-driven insights to optimize campaigns across channels, maximize efficiencies, reduce churn, and drive net subscriber growth.

• Stay up to date on industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies in the paid media space to integrate new strategies and tactics.

• Guide team members in executing paid media campaigns that nurture reader habits, encouraging sustained interactions with The Washington Post to improve retention.

• Provide a weekly performance update to internal teams and key stakeholders, identifying opportunities to scale efforts or refine strategy for better acquisition outcomes.

• Partner with editorial and newsroom audience strategy teams to implement content strategies that engage high quality audiences and build relationships at each touchpoint through their customer journey.

• Leverage key data insights to inform Paid Media sale and non-sale strategy through always on Direct Response campaigns.

• Exercise a thorough knowledge of the brand and an ability to balance paid media goals with broader company objectives, ensuring a strong connection between marketing efforts and audience loyalty.

Qualifications • Must have both strategy/planning and hands-on-keyboard campaign management experience - ideally across both Social and Search advertising platforms, such as Meta, Reddit, Microsoft Bing, Apple Search, LinkedIn, Google (Search), and YouTube. Experience in app campaigns is a plus.

• A bachelor’s degree in marketing, advertising, journalism, political science, english or communications or a related discipline.

• 4-5 years experience working in digital marketing, advertising, media or publishing.

• Experience leveraging data to make informed decisions is a must. Experience setting up in-platform events and tracking or partnering closely with Ad Ops teams to execute tracking is a plus.

• Experience managing paid marketing campaigns to achieve multiple marketing objectives.

• Demonstrated success with building an audience through social networks.

• Expert in using Tableau and Google Sheets to analyze data.

  Collaboration makes us stronger. That’s why our offices are designed with open layouts, modern technology, and easy access to transportation. With certain exceptions for newsgathering and business travel, we work on-site five days a week.

Compensation and Benefits

Wherever you are in your life or career, The Washington Post offers comprehensive and inclusive benefits for every step of your journey: • Competitive medical, dental and vision coverage

• Company-paid pension and 401(k) match

• Three weeks of vacation and up to three weeks of paid sick leave

• Nine paid holidays and two personal days

• 20 weeks paid parental leave for any new parent

• Robust mental health resources

• Backup care and caregiver concierge services

• Gender affirming services

• Pet

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