Paid Media Manager

About Us

At Oliver’s Travels, we’re passionate about making travel extraordinary. We believe holidays should be memorable, unique and tailored to our guests. That passion has seen us recognised among the best in the industry, with accolades including 10 consecutive years in the Condé Nast Traveller Readers’ Choice Awards, a place in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 as one of the UK’s fastest-growing companies, and most recently, Best TV/Streaming Advertising at The Travel Marketing Awards.

Now, we’re looking for a commercially driven Paid Media Manager to join our ambitious and creative team.

Job Overview

Paid media is a major driver of growth at Oliver’s Travels, and we’re looking for an experienced, commercially minded Paid Media Manager to take ownership of our paid acquisition strategy and performance.

Your goal is clear: maximise demand by generating as many bookings and high-quality enquiries as possible within agreed efficiency and profitability targets.

You’ll own a significant and growing multi-channel paid media budget across our key markets, continually identifying where investment will deliver the strongest returns. This means looking beyond individual channel metrics and understanding how paid media ultimately contributes to bookings, revenue and growth.

This is a hands-on role. You’ll set the strategy, manage and work with our agencies, as well as our internal teams across Marketing and Sales, but you’ll also be actively working within the platforms yourself, analysing, testing and optimising campaigns.

For online activity, you’ll focus on driving direct bookings. For enquiry-led journeys, you’ll work closely with the Sales team to ensure we’re not simply generating more leads, but attracting the right customers and delivering the quality and conversion rates the business needs.

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced paid media specialist who wants genuine ownership of a substantial acquisition channel and the opportunity to have a direct impact on the growth of an ambitious travel brand.

Key Responsibilities

Paid Media Strategy & Ownership

• Own and develop Oliver’s Travels’ paid media strategy and roadmap, with responsibility for driving profitable bookings, enquiries and revenue.

• Manage a significant and growing paid media budget across channels, campaigns and markets, allocating investment towards the strongest commercial opportunities.

• Own paid acquisition across the full channel mix, including Google Ads, Meta, Microsoft Ads, YouTube, display, retargeting and emerging channels.

• Own paid media planning and forecasting, balancing demand capture and generation while identifying opportunities to scale profitable growth.

• Work effectively with internal teams, platform partners and external agency support to ensure activity is aligned to our strategy, priorities and performance targets.

• Stay ahead of developments across paid media, automation and AI, testing new channels, technologies and approaches that could improve performance.

Campaign Management & Optimisation

• Work hands-on within advertising platforms to build, manage and optimise campaigns across targeting, audiences, bidding, budgets, search terms, feeds and other key performance levers.

• Continually optimise towards agreed commercial metrics including bookings, revenue, ROAS, CPA/CAC, enquiry volume and cost per enquiry.

• Develop and deliver a structured testing roadmap across campaigns, audiences, bidding, landing pages, messaging and creative.

• Work collaboratively with internal teams and external partners to deliver activity, while maintaining strong visibility and ownership of account performance.

• Make effective use of first-party data, audience signals and platform automation while maintaining strong account structure, tracking and governance.

• Monitor account health and performance closely, identifying issues and opportunities early and acting quickly.

Demand, Leads & Commercial Performance

• Maximise profitable demand across both direct online bookings and Sales-led enquiries, balancing volume, efficiency and opportunities to scale.

• Work closely with Sales to understand lead quality and downstream conversion, optimising towards customers most likely to book rather than enquiry volume alone.

• Understand performance across the full acquisition funnel, connecting media investment with traffic, enquiries, bookings and revenue.

• Use differences across markets, destinations, seasons, audiences and customer segments to inform investment and optimisation decisions.

• Work with the wider Digital team to identify landing-page and conversion opportunities that can improve paid media performance.

Data, Measurement & Insights

• Own paid media performance reporting, working closely with Marketing Ops to ensure accurate tracking, measurement, dashboards and attribution.

• Turn campaign and commercial data into clear insights and recommendations, explaining not just what happened, but why and what action should be taken.

• Monitor performance against agreed KPIs, forecasts and targets, connecting media spend to enquiries, bookings and revenue.

• Develop a strong understanding of attribution and incrementality, recognising where platform-reported performance may not reflect the complete commercial picture.

• Monitor competitor and market developments to identify opportunities and inform future strategy.

Team & Collaboration

• Manage and develop one direct report, providing clear priorities, coaching and support.

• Work closely with Marketing and other teams to deliver the paid media roadmap to remove barriers to performance.

• Collaborate effectively with external agencies and platform partners, ensuring activity is aligned with our commercial objectives and opportunities are acted upon.

• Champion paid media best practice and a proactive test-and-learn approach across the team.

• Ensure cross-functional requirements are clearly briefed, prioritised and followed through to delivery.

Qualifications / Skills

• Around 3–5 years’ hands-on paid media experience, with a strong track record of delivering measurable commercial growth.

• Demonstratable experience taking ownership of large annual paid media accounts/budgets.

• Advanced hands-on knowledge of Google Ads, including Search and Performance Max, alongside strong experience with Meta Ads.

• Experience across additional channels such as Microsoft Ads, YouTube, display and other paid social platforms is advantageous.

• Strong commercial and analytical skills, with experience optimising investment towards revenue, ROAS, CPA/CAC and other profitability-based metrics.

• Experience generating both online transactions and leads/enquiries, with an understanding of downstream conversion and lead quality.

• Strong knowledge of measurement, including GA4, conversion tracking, attribution, audience strategy and first-party data.

• A strong testing mindset, with experience designing and evaluating meaningful campaign experiments.

• Experience managing or mentoring another team member.

• Experience working effectively with agencies and external partners while retaining ownership of strategy and performance.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the confidence to take ownership of a commercially important channel.

• Experience within travel and/or managing campaigns across multiple international markets is advantageous but not essential.

Location: Oval, London

Remote status: Hybrid – 3 office days a week

Reports to: Head of Marketing

Start date: 5th January 2027