Client Partnerships Manager

CLIENT PARTNERSHIPS MANAGER

Beauty, Fashion & Wellness · California · Part-time, 20 hours per week · Availability within 9am to 5pm PST

THE COMPANY

The company is a California-based beauty, fashion, and wellness lifestyle platform, built on a foundation of carefully curated content and products. Results are the common language here: clear goals, clear numbers, a visible line from contribution to outcome. AI is native to the way the team works, in every function, which raises the bar on what a small group can accomplish. Authority sits with the work: your scope is defined, and inside it you have real decision rights that we expect you to use. Founder mode is not a phase we are in; it is how the company is built.

REPORTING STRUCTURE

This role reports directly to the VP, Strategic Partnerships & Sales and sits within the Strategic Partnerships team. It works in close partnership with the Ad Operations Manager, who owns campaign trafficking, delivery, and inventory forecasting.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking a Client Partnerships Manager to own the commercial and client-facing side of our digital media business. This individual owns pricing strategy, media planning, the RFP process, and the relationships with our advertising clients and agencies across our digital media, social, newsletter, and podcast advertising products.

This is a highly cross-functional role that partners closely with Sales, Marketing, Edit, Creative, and Finance, and requires deep institutional knowledge of our most valued client and agency relationships.

This is a part-time role of 20 hours per week, with availability required within 9am to 5pm PST.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Pricing & Media Planning

Lead campaign pricing strategy across digital media, social media, newsletter, and podcast inventory, managing CPMs to ensure competitive pricing. Jointly maintain the digital media rate card with the Ad Operations Manager, who supplies inventory availability and yield data to inform pricing. Partner with the Sales team during pre-sale negotiations as the team's digital media subject-matter expert. Build media plans that meet client KPIs, including awareness, engagement, share of voice, viewability, and competitive separation requirements. Own the full RFP process (75 to 100+ annually), building media plans and negotiating deliverables with clients and agencies. Work with the Ad Operations Manager on inventory availability to inform media plans and RFP responses.

Client & Agency Management

Serve as the dedicated relationship owner for a portfolio of key advertising clients and agencies across luxury, auto, tech, and finance verticals: the direct point of contact fielding questions and resolving issues in real time across the full campaign lifecycle. Maintain institutional knowledge of high-touch clients and partners, including their nuanced needs and expectations. Own client onboarding for new digital media partners, ensuring a smooth handoff from Sales into ad operations and campaign execution. Field recurring client touchpoints to walk through campaign performance, surface concerns early, and identify growth opportunities. Proactively monitor account health, including delivery pacing, creative approvals, and campaign performance, and flag risk before it becomes a client-facing issue. Act as the internal escalation point for service issues, pulling in the appropriate leads across Sales, Marketing, Tech, Finance, or Creative as needed to resolve concerns quickly. Partner with Sales to identify renewal, upsell, and expansion opportunities within existing digital media accounts. Manage the relationship with our podcast partner, overseeing inventory, deliverables, pricing, and campaign management.

Creative & Cross-Functional Collaboration

Partner with Edit and Creative teams to develop custom native ad units for select campaigns. Collect and manage creative assets and imagery from clients and agencies to support custom ad builds.

Post-Sale & Reporting

Partner with Finance on campaign billing and actuals. Own external reporting and screenshot/performance decks for clients and agencies, using campaign analytics supplied by the Ad Operations Manager.

CORE COMPETENCIES

This role goes beyond a fixed list of tasks. The ideal candidate operates as a true utility player for the team: trusted, dependable, and resourceful, and willing to pick up new or undefined projects as they arise.

Builds and improves systems and processes proactively, often behind the scenes, so that sales leads and marketers never have to worry about the operational details. Maintains a consistently high bar for client and agency service: responsive, supportive, and available to partners when they need it. Brings a kind demeanor and positive attitude to every interaction, building relationships that make clients and agencies want to keep working with us. Responds quickly and reliably, giving internal and external partners confidence that things are handled. Takes ownership beyond the scope of any single campaign or ticket, acting as a dependable go-to resource for the broader team.

WHAT YOU BRING

Experience managing high-touch client and agency relationships, including at senior levels. Excellent organizational skills and comfort managing high RFP volume and Q4-style peak periods. Proven experience building media plans against client KPIs (awareness, engagement, SOV, viewability). Strong command of digital media pricing, rate cards, and CPM/CPC economics. Advanced Excel/analytics skills and experience building client-facing reporting decks. 5+ years of experience in digital ad operations, media trafficking, or a related digital media role, ideally within publishing, media, or e-commerce. Strong cross-functional collaborator, with experience working alongside Sales, Creative, Edit, Finance, and Engineering teams. Detail-oriented and deadline-driven.

5+ years in digital ad operations, media trafficking, or a related digital media role, ideally publishing, media, or e-commerce Sell-side experience: worked for a publisher or platform selling its own ad inventory, not buying media for clients Managed high-touch client and agency relationships at senior levels Built media plans against client KPIs: awareness, engagement, SOV, viewability Owned or maintained a rate card; strong command of CPM/CPC economics Handled high RFP volume (target 50+/yr; the role is 75 to 100+) Built client-facing reporting decks; advanced Excel Cross-functional experience with Sales, Creative, Edit, Finance, Engineering Comfort using AI tools day to day

Beauty, fashion, wellness, or lifestyle publisher background Newsletter, podcast, or paid social inventory experience Worked with luxury, auto, tech, or finance advertisers Agency-side experience (understands how the buyer thinks in an RFP) Working knowledge of Google Ad Manager, enough to talk to the Ad Ops counterpart

Advanced Excel or Google Sheets: pivot tables, VLOOKUP/INDEX-MATCH PowerPoint or Google Slides for client decks Some reporting or BI tool: Looker Studio, Tableau, Datorama, or equivalent Familiarity with ad server reporting output (doesn't need to operate it)