Senior Director-Media Planning

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 .

About WPP Media 

WPP is the creative transformation company. We use the power of creativity to build better futures for our people, planet, clients and communities. For more information, visit wpp.com. 

WPP Media is WPP’s global media collective. In a world where media is everywhere and in everything, we bring the best platform, people, and partners together to create limitless opportunities for growth. For more information, visit wppmedia.com 

At WPP Media, we believe in the power of our culture and our people. It’s what elevates us to deliver exceptional experiences for both our clients and each other. In this role it will be critical to embrace WPP & WPP Media’s shared core values: 

Be Extraordinary by Leading Collectively to Inspire transformational Creativity. 

Create an Open environment by Balancing People and Client Experiences by Cultivating Trust. 

Lead Optimistically by Championing Growth and Development to Mobilize the Enterprise. 

Role Summary and Impact

As part of our Global Operations Centre (GOC), you will partner with teams across the U.S., Europe, and Asia to deliver high-impact, integrated media planning solutions across multiple markets and channels.

We are looking for a Senior Director – Media Planning who will:

Strategic Client Leadership & Planning:  

Act as the senior planning lead and strategic partner for global and multi‑market clients, ensuring media planning excellence aligned with client business objectives.

Maintain a relentless focus on driving client outcome growth, applying performance‑led planning principles, data‑informed audience insights, optimisation thinking and advanced analytical perspectives to planning decision‑making.

Serve as a subject‑matter expert across multiple channels and planning practices, with a strong understanding of how channels work together to deliver short‑ and long‑term client outcomes.

Provide strategic guidance and recommendations on the optimal use of media products, services and solutions, ensuring alignment with client needs, business strategy and return on investment expectations.

Act as a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders, nurturing long‑term relationships and supporting clients in navigating complex business challenges, organisational change and evolving market dynamics.

Demonstrate deep understanding of client businesses, including successes, challenges and strategic priorities, and apply experience‑based judgement to identify opportunities, risks and trade‑offs from a business perspective.

Lead senior‑level planning discussions across multiple stakeholders, effectively synthesising and reconciling diverse or conflicting inputs to drive alignment and shared understanding.

Embed performance‑led and outcome‑oriented thinking into the planning process by ensuring that insights, intelligence and forecasts from activation and specialist teams are reflected in strategic recommendations.

Define and oversee planning‑level KPIs, governance frameworks and planning processes that enable optimisation, benchmarking and continuous improvement across client portfolios.

Champion a data‑driven planning culture, partnering with analytics and data science teams to prioritise initiatives and ensure insights are effectively translated into planning outputs.

Develop high‑level growth and commercial planning perspectives for assigned clients or portfolios, including directional forecasts, profitability considerations and identification of priority growth areas.

Maintain a strong understanding of WPP Media agency deliverables and committed campaign KPIs, ensuring planning outputs are aligned with agreed client expectations.

Represent the planning discipline with credibility in senior client meetings, contributing technical and strategic expertise when required.

Own the senior client engagement cadence from a planning perspective, including strategic sessions, status forums and cross‑functional meetings, ensuring consistent and high‑quality representation of the planning function.

Take ownership of key planning workstreams on complex or multi‑market initiatives, ensuring clarity of scope, appropriate governance and high‑quality outputs.

 

Capability Development:  

Identify capability gaps within media planning teams supporting client portfolios and define actions to address them through development, upskilling or targeted hiring. 

Partner with global planning practices, investment, product and solutions teams to help develop and drive adoption of new proprietary solutions on behalf of the OpCo.

Represent the planning perspective in shaping capability priorities for the Polish GOC, ensuring alignment with broader WPP Media standards, expectations and strategic direction.

Own the development and long‑term evolution of the Media Planning discipline within the Polish GOC, including definition of role profiles, competency frameworks and quality standards.

Provide leadership and oversight for planning talent, establishing consistent development approaches, evaluation principles and coaching practices that support high performance and career progression.

Build and maintain planning governance, including methodologies, templates and quality assurance standards, to ensure consistency, scalability and excellence of planning outputs.

Foster a culture of continuous improvement and knowledge sharing within the planning community, supporting best‑practice exchange across teams and markets.

 

Collaboration & Leadership:  

Operate effectively within a complex, matrixed organizational environment, providing leadership through influence and partnership across client, planning and activation teams.

Collaborate closely with client leadership, activation leads and regional stakeholders to ensure alignment between strategic intent, planning outputs and execution delivery.

Represent the planning discipline with credibility across cross‑functional forums, ensuring consistent understanding of objectives, priorities and expectations.

Enable effective communication and knowledge sharing between planning and activation teams, fostering clarity, collaboration and continuous improvement.

Outline, monitor and support adherence to agreed client and WPP Media standards, ensuring planning excellence is consistently reflected across engagements.

Partner with senior stakeholders to identify gaps, risks or misalignments, and contribute to the development of action plans and improvement frameworks.

Act as a senior counterpart to Activation Directors and Leads, promoting shared accountability for client outcomes and strong collaboration across disciplines.

Lead by example in building a collaborative, inclusive and high‑performance culture, encouraging teamwork, ownership and professional growth across teams.

Data-Driven Insights: 

Utilize advanced data analytics to understand media performance deeply, and guide optimization strategies ensuring maximum ROI. 

Provides expert insights on the application of data science and how to effectively use client and all biddable data signals.  

Future-Forward Thinking:  

Stay ahead of media and technology trends, providing guidance on emerging opportunities and threats. 

Proactively develops blueprints and action plans to help propel achieving client business objectives by bringing together practitioners across practices, proprietary solutions and extended WPP Media capabilities, at a regional level.

Skills and Experience

15+ years of experience in across paid media, strategy, retail, or consulting, including senior roles requiring leadership and accountability for teams and stakeholders.

Expertise in digital media, adtech, martech and data platforms 

Proven track record of managing complex, multi-market accounts where you’ve delivered measurable business outcomes.

Deep knowledge of multi-practice area/industry usage and trends, and how it impacts customer businesses.

Ability to communicate in a way that is highly persuasive, engaging and comprehensive (written and verbal).

Fluent in different types of media strategy – and understands that the road to strong brand is paved with performance marketing principles at the core.

Sophisticated understanding of the media investment, ad tech and agency ecosystem

Experience overseeing technology and/or operations transformation programs.

Ability to tell complex narratives in a simple and compelling way.

Passion for digital and data, well versed on the latest global advancements & dynamics.

Ability to lead through influence, demonstrating strong interpersonal skills, empathy and credibility across seniority levels.

Demonstrated experience owning and leading senior client planning relationships across large, complex, and matrixed client teams.

Proven capability leadership: building a planning team, hiring for defined profiles, and developing a discipline at scale, including people development, performance management and succession planning.

 

Life at WPP Media & Benefits  

Our passion for shaping the next era of media includes investing in our employees to help them do their best work, and we’re just as committed to employee growth as we are to responsible media investment. WPP Media employees can tap into the global WPP Media & WPP networks to pursue their passions, grow their networks, and learn at the cutting edge of marketing and advertising. We have a variety of employee resource groups and host frequent in-office events showcasing team wins, sharing thought leadership, and celebrating holidays and milestone events. Our benefits include competitive medical, group retirement plans, vision, and dental insurance, significant paid time off, preferential partner discounts, and employee mental health awareness days.     

WPP Media is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.  

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