Associate Director, Retail Media Search

About WPP Media WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. With exceptional talent, trusted data and intelligence, and world-class partnerships – all united by our pioneering agentic marketing platform, WPP Open – we help clients navigate change, capture opportunity, and deliver transformational growth.  WPP Media is WPP's AI-driven media operating unit, bringing together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalisation at scale. Connected through WPP Open and powered by Open Intelligence, clients see exactly where, how, and why their media investment is working. For more information, visit wppmedia.com . Role Summary & Impact The Associate Director, Commerce Search will lead retail media search strategy and activation for a beauty-focused client portfolio, with an emphasis on navigating the unique commerce ecosystems of specialty retailers and department stores. We’re looking for a commerce marketer who understands that retail media goes beyond Amazon and Walmart. The ideal candidate brings experience working with beauty, luxury, fashion, or similarly retail-driven brands and understands how brands engage consumers across retailers such as Ulta Beauty, Sephora, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, and other specialty and department-store environments. In this role, you’ll translate retailer, consumer, product, inventory, and performance insights into smart search and commerce activation strategies. You’ll lead campaign strategy and execution, develop keyword and optimization approaches, manage retail media investments, and partner directly with clients, retailers, and internal teams to drive measurable business results. You’ll also manage and develop a team while helping clients navigate an increasingly complex retail media landscape. Strong retail media experience is essential; beauty or adjacent specialty retail experience is highly preferred. What You’ll Do • Lead search and retail media strategy and activation across multiple retailer environments. • Own keyword strategy, campaign setup, bidding, budgeting, optimization, testing, and performance reporting. • Bring a strong understanding of specialty and department-store commerce, particularly how brands drive growth across retailer partners. • Translate retail considerations such as inventory, product availability, demand, profitability, promotions, and seasonality into media recommendations. • Build strong relationships with client stakeholders, retailer media partners, and internal teams. • Identify opportunities to connect retail search with the broader commerce and media ecosystem. • Use performance data to identify trends and translate them into clear, actionable recommendations. • Lead cross-channel testing and optimization strategies. • Manage and develop direct reports, helping strengthen both their activation expertise and strategic capabilities. • Stay ahead of developments across retail media platforms, ad products, technology, and measurement. • Oversee campaign operations, including trafficking, billing/reconciliation, and data integrity. Experience • 5+ years of retail media, commerce search, paid ecommerce, or biddable performance media experience, with substantial hands-on retail search experience. • Strongly preferred: experience supporting beauty, cosmetics, luxury, fashion, or another category heavily connected to specialty and department-store retail. • Experience working with specialty retailers and/or department stores. Beauty retailer experience is especially relevant. • Hands-on experience managing retail media/search campaigns and optimizing toward business and performance objectives. • Experience across retail media and commerce platforms such as Amazon Ads, Criteo, Walmart Connect, Pacv