Paid Media Manager - Meta & Google in Michigan City, Indiana at Peepers by Peeperspecs

Job Title: Paid Media Manager - Meta & Google
Reports to: VP of Marketing & Operations
FLSA Status: Full-time; Exempt

The role in one paragraph:
You'll own a $500K+/month paid media budget across Meta and Google for a profitable, 4th-generation family-run eyewear brand — and you'll own it end to end. Not just the buying: the forecast, the budget allocation, creative input, and the contribution-margin P&L behind it all. You'll report directly to the VP of Marketing & Operations with real autonomy to run the acquisition engine your way, using internal AI, incrementality testing, and generative AI tools to move faster than a traditional media buying team ever could.
If you've been running serious spend inside an agency or a larger brand and want full ownership of the outcome — not just the dashboard — this is that role.

What makes this a great opportunity for you:
-Real budget, real ownership. $500K+/month in spend and ownership of the acquisition P&L. Your decisions show up in the company's financials, and you answer directly to the VP — no layers.

- A brand that converts. Peepers is a category leader in reading glasses and blue-light eyewear with a loyal customer base, strong product margins, and a catalog built for repeat purchase. You're pouring fuel on a fire that's already burning, not trying to start one.

- Modern stack, modern mandate. We believe the best media buyers in 2026 aren't button-pushers — they're strategists who let AI and automation do the heavy lifting. You'll have budget for tools (Motion, Triple Whale, Northbeam, or whatever you make the case for) and a mandate to experiment.

What you'll actually do:
- Own the number. Maintain a P&L-level forecast tying channel budgets to contribution-margin targets (not just ROAS), and manage daily/weekly spend pacing across Meta and Google against it.

- Allocate by marginal return. Shift budget dynamically across channels, campaigns, and audiences based on incrementality — validated with geo-lift and holdout testing — rather than last-click attribution or platform-reported numbers.

- Architect for platform AI. Structure Advantage+ Shopping and Performance Max campaigns to work for your financial targets: knowing when to consolidate, when to segment, and how to use bid caps and cost controls to keep the algorithms honest.

- Have input on the creative engine. You won't be behind the camera, but your voice will be heard. Help create the demand plan (how many statics, videos, UGC assets, and hook styles spend requires), translate performance data into ideas, and run a structured creative testing pipeline with our internal team and external creators.

- Run rigorous experiments. Creative tests, audience tests, landing page tests — with proper holdouts and statistical discipline, not vibes.

- Connect the data. Unify ad platform data, Shopify, and customer analytics into one view. Monitor cohort LTV, new-vs-returning CAC, and retention, and adjust in real time.

- Stay ahead of the tools. Evaluate and adopt emerging AI tools for attribution, creative analysis, and reporting — and fold the good ones into the daily workflow.

You're probably a fit if:
- You have 4+ years buying paid social and paid search, including direct ownership of $200K+/month in spend (in-house DTC or agency).

- You've worked hands-on with Advantage+ Shopping and Performance Max and understand automated bidding well enough to know when the platform is lying to you.

- You're financially fluent — comfortable in a P&L, and you know why contribution margin beats ROAS as a north star.

- You've run (or can credibly design) incrementality tests: geo-lift, holdouts, MMM inputs. You know the difference between correlation and incrementality.

- You can look at a dashboard and write a creative brief — you bridge quant analysis and creative direction.

- You use generative AI daily — for ad copy iteration, analysis, reporting, ideation — and evaluate new tools with a bias toward action.

- You're highly autonomous: you take direction and run, spotting gaps and building solutions before being asked.

Don't check every box?
If you've owned meaningful spend and the P&L mindset described above, we'd still like to hear from you!

Nice to have
- Experience with eyewear, accessories, or catalog-driven DTC/e-commerce brands
- Familiarity with MMM or third-party incrementality platforms (Measured, Northbeam, Lifetimely, or similar)
- Background unifying acquisition and retention in a single growth framework