Product Director, Digital Channels

Product Director, Digital Channels

Manages the entire life cycle of the Digital Channels product and capability portfolio involving strategy, planning, and project leadership to achieve business goals. Owns a growing portfolio of digital channel products including Programmatic, Paid Search, Paid Social, and Hyperlocal as both standalone products sold to financial institution clients and as channel components embedded within bundled solutions. Accountable for digital channel P&L and partners with solution Product Directors and Sales as the digital channel product owner.

This role operates in an AI-enabled product environment. The successful candidate will be a practiced user of AI tools and will be expected to apply them actively from day one to accelerate capability definition, media analytics, roadmap development, and product requirements planning.

Lead cross-functional capability development projects: Work as Project Lead on complex Digital Channel capability projects (new or run-the-business) that involve operations, technology and data partners, agency partners, platform vendors, and cross-functional teams. Lead product requirements development and MVP definition across the digital capability portfolio including Programmatic, Paid Search, Paid Social, and Hyperlocal, including the in-house development of Paid Search capabilities. Develop and execute project plans with clearly defined performance indicators. Report updates to stakeholders as needed. Cultivate strong relationships with cross-functional leadership internally, collaborate with the Director of Programmatic on DSP strategy and platform expectations, and manage agency and platform partner relationships. Effectively influence others to adopt a course of action on critical, complex, or sensitive capability decisions.

Financial Review and Price Modeling: Conduct financial analyses to assess product viability. Develop business cases with pricing models to support strategic investment decisions, standalone digital media product pricing, and channel-embedded pricing within bundled solutions. Collaborate with finance teams to track digital channel P&L, mitigate financial risks, and optimize media cost efficiency across CPM, CPC, and CPL buying models. Monitor digital channel revenue performance, analyze sales pipeline and cost trends, and leverage data-driven insights to refine monetization models and drive sustainable channel margin growth.

Set strategy: Collaborate with the Product VP and senior leaders to develop digital channel capability strategies aligned with financial goals and the growing portfolio of digital offerings. Support the conceptualization and execution of strategic channel initiatives including in-house capability builds, new platform partnerships, channel expansion, and product line extensions. Provide thought leadership by anticipating digital advertising trends and financial services client needs, incorporating insights from Sales, clients, and other key stakeholders to drive channel innovation.

Deliver capabilities to market: For capability launches, enhancements, or new digital channel offerings including in-house Paid Search development lead support functions through the entire go-to-market process ensuring: operational documentation and alignment, pricing strategy, marketing collateral and channel positioning, sales enablement materials, financial model, technical specifications, and Sales training. Serve as an ambassador for the digital channel capability portfolio to internal and external audiences.

Evaluate ideas: Evaluate digital channel capability ideas and opportunities within established processes to ensure development of differentiated solutions that meet client demand and align with business feasibility. Assess new opportunities including targeting innovations, platform capabilities, and vendor solutions through a strategic lens with working knowledge of financial services compliance requirements specific to digital advertising. Apply informed judgment on where to advance new digital approaches and when to engage legal and compliance partners to navigate regulatory considerations, mitigating risks while fostering responsible digital capability innovation. Advocate for a balanced approach to growth, prioritizing consumer protection, data governance, and long-term sustainability.

Create and communicate roadmaps: Support the quarterly digital channel capability roadmap planning processes to define capability enhancements and projects to be completed each quarter across the growing digital portfolio, working within capacity constraints.

Prioritize capability features: Maintain or improve digital channel capability efficacy, media delivery efficiency, and new capability features by consulting with and providing input to agency partners, platform representatives, and operational teams.

Education: Bachelor's Degree (Required). Master's Degree (Preferred). In lieu of the above education requirements, a combination of experience and education will be considered.

Experience: 8+ years prior leadership and management experience acquired within or outside of company required. In-depth knowledge and extensive experience with digital media channels including programmatic, paid search, paid social, and hyperlocal advertising required; financial services advertising and product experience strongly preferred. Demonstrated working knowledge of compliance requirements specific to digital marketing in regulated industries, agency relationship management, DSP platform partnerships, and developing product requirements and MVP frameworks required. Knowledge of workflow and business relationships for all functional areas within company. Demonstrated, hands-on use of AI tools as part of day-to-day product work required; candidates should be able to speak to specific tools used and outcomes achieved, not just familiarity with the concept. Knowledge of Microsoft Office software required.

Analytical skills: Ability to read, analyze, and interpret digital media performance data, financial reporting, platform analytics, and media cost economics across multiple buying models.

Communication skills: Able to effectively write reports and correspondence, discuss ideas at all levels of the organization, and present information to others, inside or outside of the organization.

Financial skills: Ability to work with financial and profitability concepts and apply to practical situations including digital channel P&L ownership, media cost modeling across CPM, CPC, and CPL structures, and solution-embedded pricing.

Innovation skills: Ability to create and adapt digital channel capabilities based on business and marketplace change, using existing knowledge to discover original approaches that benefit the business, and to assess and implement ideas from others.

AI fluency: Actively uses AI tools to accelerate product work, including but not limited to capability documentation, media analytics, competitive research, and roadmap planning. Comfort operating in fast-moving, AI-enabled workflows is required; this role is expected to move at AI speed.

Interpersonal skills - Able to empathize, influence, appreciate, and organize others.

Leadership skills: Ability to lead execution of capability projects and initiatives impacting various functional areas, and to effectively influence others to adopt a course of action on critical, complex, or sensitive information.

Problem solving skills: Able to solve complex digital channel capability and operational problems that have a broad impact within or outside the department. Comfortable navigating ambiguity and establishing frameworks where none previously existed. Proactively seeks input from others to determine course of action.

Strategic thinking skills: Ability to understand the business's long-term goals and align growing digital channel capability opportunities accordingly, with an in-depth understanding of the impact of decisions on overall organization.

Compensation Range: $165,000-$170,000 annually. Position is eligible for an annual bonus incentive program. Applications will be accepted until the posted deadline August 30th or until a sufficient candidate pool has been identified.

Vericast offers a generous total rewards benefits package that includes medical, dental and vision coverage, and a generous PTO allowance. A wide variety of additional benefits like life insurance, employee assistance and pet insurance are also available, not to mention smart and friendly coworkers!