Senior Director, Industry Strategy (Advertising)

Application Deadline: 27 August 2026

Department: Marketing

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: United States (East Coast)

Reporting To: Melissa Coito

Compensation: $190K - $200K base + $13K bonus

Description

• A trusted expert, educator, and industry advocate externally
• A strategic, cross-functional SME and connective layer internally

What you'll do:

• Bring deep expertise in advertising strategy, creative effectiveness, campaign development, ad testing, and consumer research methodologies.
• Act as a senior subject matter expert on creative testing, campaign diagnostics, norms, benchmarks, competitive dynamics, and market trends.
• Understand how large enterprise organizations operate, including process, politics, agency dynamics, decision-making, budget pressures, stakeholder complexity, and media and creative timelines.
• Stay ahead of emerging trends in advertising effectiveness, AI-generated creative, synthetic respondents, creative volume, digital and social testing, predictive models, and connected learning systems.
• Function as a trusted internal advisor across the organization.
  
  
• Work closely with Sales, Customer, Product, Product Marketing, Marketing, and Research Science teams on strategic narratives and customer engagements.
• Help Product Marketing build messaging, frameworks, demos, POVs, enablement, competitive guidance, and customer-facing materials when expertise-level knowledge is needed.
• Support enterprise opportunities as a strategic expert and advisor, speaking directly to customers and prospects when senior advertising expertise is needed.
• Clarify where Zappi’s advertising solutions fit across the creative development lifecycle, from early creative exploration to validation, optimization, and connected learning.
• Own the competitive intelligence program for advertising research and creative effectiveness, translating market, competitor, customer, and industry shifts into internal guidance and external-facing content.
  
  
• Develop a visible external voice in the advertising effectiveness and creative development space.
• Create thought leadership on the future of advertising research, better creative decision-making at scale, AI in creative development, synthetic methods in ad testing, and connected creative learning.
• Speak at conferences, webinars, customer events, and industry forums.
• Engage with analysts, strategic customers, and industry communities.
• Co-create customer education materials and programs with Customer Marketing.
  
  
• Translate customer realities, workflow needs, agency dynamics, and competitive gaps into actionable product and GTM recommendations.
• Partner closely with Product, Research Science, and Commercialization teams.
• Align with Product Marketing, Product, and Commercialization to pressure test emerging AI, synthetic, predictive, diagnostic, and connected-learning capabilities from both methodological and commercial perspectives.
• Serve as a second voice outside of Product to help ensure product direction aligns with real-world customer workflows, buyer expectations, and unmet needs.

• Zappi has a stronger, clearer, and more differentiated point of view in advertising effectiveness, creative development, and modern creative decisioning.
• GTM teams are more confident and effective in advertising conversations, with stronger discovery, sharper positioning, and better objection handling.
• Zappi’s advertising offerings are easier for Sales and Account teams to position as a strategic growth opportunity, not simply a set of point solutions or individual ad tests.
• Enterprise buyers increasingly view Zappi as a strategic partner for advertising effectiveness, creative development, and connected campaign learning.
• Product and GTM strategy are more closely aligned to customer realities, creative development workflows, competitive dynamics, and emerging market needs.
• Zappi builds greater external authority through thought leadership, customer education, industry participation, and expert-led advertising narratives.

What we’re looking for:

• 10+ years of experience in creative development, ad testing, campaign strategy, consumer insights, advertising effectiveness, or market research.
• Deep expertise in advertising research methodologies, including pre-market ad testing, creative diagnostics, campaign learning, norms, benchmarking, and KPI interpretation.
• Experience working with enterprise brands and senior stakeholders across Insights, Marketing, Brand, Media, Creative, Commercial, or Strategy teams.
• Strong understanding of how enterprise teams make advertising decisions, manage creative risk, and connect consumer insight to campaign performance.
• Ability to translate complex advertising methodologies into clear commercial narratives, sales guidance, executive-level storytelling, and customer-facing POVs.
• Experience supporting strategic sales, enterprise customer conversations, thought leadership, or consultative growth motions.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, and storytelling skills, with comfort representing a company externally as a senior industry expert.

• Consumer insights, brand, media, creative, or strategy teams
• Advertising research, market research, or creative effectiveness consulting
• Advertising effectiveness or creative development leadership
• Senior roles within research, insights, ad tech, creative analytics, or marketing technology providers.

Why join us:

• Three company-paid mental health days of rest per year (these are pre-scheduled, so the entire company can take the same days off regularly to reset)
• Generous PTO policy - Minimum of 20 days of paid time off per year, plus national holidays. Leave over 30 days requires manager and People team approval.
• Private medical healthcare cover
• Group risk, life & disability contributions
• Flexible working arrangements, including remote (unless otherwise specified)
• Thoughtfully designed offices to support both individual work and collaboration without interrupting others
• Wellbeing benefits such as free yoga and access to trained therapists / counsellors
• Enhanced parental leave policies
• Free lunch in the office Tuesday-Thursday
• Tax efficient pension contributions via salary sacrifice scheme
• Salary sacrifice cycle to work scheme
• Salary sacrifice nursery scheme
• Tailored personal development through training allowances, coaching, mentorship and career frameworks

• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company for Women 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company Work-Life Balance 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company Compensation 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best CEO for Women 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company for Diversity 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company Culture 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best CEO 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Happiness 2022
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Leadership Teams 2023
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best CEOs for Diversity 2023
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Engineering Teams 2023
• Winner of Comparably's Award for Best Company Outlook 2023
• Winner of Newsweek’s Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in the UK 2022 & 2023
• Recognised by Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators 2023
• Winner of Best Marketing Insights Platform in the MarTech Breakthrough Awards 2023 & 2024