Senior Manager, Ad Operations & Yield

What The Role Is Babylist Media sells onsite and offsite advertising to the brands that growing families rely on. This role owns the supply side of that business: our Koddi ad stack, how onsite inventory is structured and served, how it's monetized, and how campaigns are distributed offsite. It's a new role. Until now, this work has been split across several people, and no one has owned it end to end. You'll report to the Director of Revenue Operations. You'll lead offsite media support and our outsourced onsite ad ops partner, and you'll still be hands-on in the ad server yourself. Who You Are • You have sell-side experience : you've worked at a publisher or retailer that owns and monetizes its inventory • You've administered an ad server hands-on : line items, targeting, priorities and delivery rules, recently enough that you can still do it yourself • You understand ad server logic and its tradeoffs : priority tiers, how competing demand is decided, pacing, frequency and fill. You can explain why a campaign under-delivered • You've owned yield : eCPM, fill, sell-through and utilization, and you've turned those numbers into inventory and pricing decisions • You've built inventory frameworks : capacity planning, allocation and prioritization rules, and controls that prevent overselling • You've led people and partners while still doing hands-on work : you've set priorities for a team or vendor and held them to standards, and you still configure campaigns yourself when a launch needs it • Retail media experience is a big plus : our inventory sits next to registry and shop purchases, and Koddi is a retail media platform • You have working knowledge of the broader stack: DSPs, SSPs, programmatic, identity and measurement • Experience moving a direct-sold, flat-fee business toward CPM or programmatic selling is a plus • Familiarity with paid social distribution (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube) sold as a media product is a plus • You can explain a technical tradeoff to Sales, Product and Finance in plain language and get a decision • You're comfortable moving between strategy, vendor management and troubleshooting in the same week. Parts of the stack are still manual, and you'll be defining the playbook, not following one • You naturally reach for AI in your work — at Babylist, every team uses AI daily. You're already using it to move faster and improve your output, and you stay curious about what's coming next. How You'll Make an Impact • Assess the current stack in your first 90 days and deliver an ad-tech, inventory and yield roadmap • Own Koddi configuration, serving logic and delivery health across onsite placements: Registry, Feed, Shop and more • Set the inventory rules for capacity, allocation and prioritization, and partner with Revenue Systems so Boostr and Koddi enforce them • Increase eCPM, fill and utilization from the supply we already have • Stand up the outsourced onsite ad ops partner: SLAs, QA standards and escalation paths • Lead offsite distribution strategy across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and Babylist Connect • Build incident response so delivery issues are caught before they turn into make-goods • Own the roadmap from flat-fee sponsorships toward CPM-based selling and, over time, self-serve buying Why This Role • We need a hands-on experienced owner of ad tech, inventory or yield. You'll define the function instead of inheriting someone else's playbook • The business is moving from flat-fee placements toward CPM and self-serve, and you'll own the roadmap that gets it there • You'll set the strategy and lead the execution team, and you'll still work in Koddi yourself. It's a player-coach role, not a desk job reviewing other people's work • The inventory is first-party and hig