Hire a Paid Ads Manager
We place Paid Ads Managers who treat ad spend as a revenue system, rather than a collection of individual campaigns.
We place Paid Ads Managers who treat ad spend as a revenue system, rather than a collection of individual campaigns.
If you’ve hired a Paid Ads Manager who reported strong ROAS by platform but couldn’t explain why overall acquisition costs kept rising, you know the problem.
Managing Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn as separate channels with separate targets is not a strategy. It is a symptom of a hire who has never been asked to think across the full funnel.
Generic recruiters scan for platform names on CVs. We assess real operational capability: how a candidate allocates budget across channels, whether they can audit a GA4 attribution setup, and how they adjust spend when the data signals that one channel is cannibalising another.
SEO, Paid Media, and Growth is all we do. That specialism is what allows us to evaluate Paid Ads talent at a depth no generalist recruiter or agency founder can match.
We work exclusively in search marketing, paid media, and growth. Our network was built from inside these industries, through relationships, not job boards.
We assess real commercial thinking, channel depth, and proven impact. Not tenure. Not titles.
The best SEO, PPC, and growth professionals aren’t browsing job boards. We go to them, directly, discreetly, and with a reason to move.
The difference between a strong Paid Ads Manager and a weak one is not visible on a CV.
Strong candidates treat the ad account as a revenue system: they allocate budget with commercial logic, tie every spend decision to profit margins and customer lifetime value, and hold themselves accountable to CPA and acquisition efficiency, not platform-level ROAS.
The wrong hire optimises each channel in isolation, defaults to “the algorithm is learning” when performance drops, and reports clicks and impressions rather than business outcomes.
What to Look For:
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What to Look For:
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What to Look For:
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Paid Ads Manager salary expectations vary significantly by location, sector, and seniority.
Use this as a baseline. Expect variation of 15–20% in either direction depending on the business, the team size, and the commercial complexity of the role.
| Region | Salary Range | Experience |
|---|---|---|
| US | $115,000 – $155,000 | Mid-Level |
| UK | £40,000 – £55,000 | Mid-Level |
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These benchmarks are backed by the world’s #1 marketing salary directory. With over 15,000 verified submissions. We offer total transparency into the market, helping you hire with confidence based on real-world data.
Paid Ads Managers who have progressed from specialist or coordinator roles and can demonstrate measurable CPA and ROAS improvements against real commercial targets command higher compensation. Those managing six-figure monthly budgets or multiple platforms independently attract offers at the upper end of the range.
Technology, SaaS, e-commerce, and financial services businesses with significant ad budgets pay a premium. Sectors where paid acquisition is the primary revenue driver, rather than a supplementary channel, attract stronger offers.
Major markets such as London, New York, and Sydney carry higher base salaries than regional equivalents. Remote roles are increasingly normalised, but location-adjusted pay remains common, particularly at US-based companies.
Paid Ads Managers who hold cross-platform budget authority, line manage junior campaign executives, or serve as the sole paid specialist in a scaling business typically attract higher compensation than those operating within a well-resourced team.
Base salary is one part of the total cost. Add employer taxes, benefits, and onboarding, and the true cost is typically 15–20% above the headline figure. A mis-hire compounds this: according to the Society for Human Resource Management, replacing a bad hire can cost up to 5 times their annual salary.
Benchmarks are directional. Live market data gives you negotiation power.
A traditional job board process takes 60 to 90 days and produces a huge list of candidates who applied.
Our process takes on average 22 to 25 days and produces Paid Media candidates who are qualified, available, and assessed against the specific demands of your role.
We brief against your commercial context, not just your job description. Team structure, growth stage, technical complexity, and the gap the hire needs to close: this shapes who we target.
We do not post and wait. We go directly to the Paid Ads Manager talent pool, agency-side, in-house, and consulting, and approach candidates who match your brief. The right hire rarely applies speculatively.
Every candidate is evaluated across a 9-area scorecard, such as cross-channel budget allocation strategy, conversion tracking and attribution setup, creative testing methodology, communication under pressure, and business outcome alignment.
Assessments include practical challenges depending on the role: a live multi-platform campaign audit, a budget reallocation simulation, and a stakeholder performance reporting exercise. We assess execution, not interview performance.
You receive a shortlist of two to three Paid Media candidates, each with a full brief from us on their capability, commercial context, and the specific rationale for their inclusion. No padding. No volume.
Every Search For Hire placement is backed by a one-year satisfaction guarantee. If the hire leaves or underperforms within 12 months, we replace them at no additional cost. Accountability is built into the process.
A Paid Ads Manager plans, executes, and optimises paid advertising campaigns across platforms including Google Ads, Meta Ads, and LinkedIn, typically reporting to a Marketing Director, Head of Performance, or Founder.
Day-to-day responsibilities include cross-channel budget allocation, bid strategy management, creative testing, conversion tracking setup, attribution review, and performance reporting. They coordinate with creative, data, and sales teams to ensure campaigns align with business objectives. The role is accountable for CPA, ROAS, and full-funnel acquisition efficiency across the paid media portfolio.
Freelance platforms surface available capacity. Generalist recruiters surface applicants. Neither evaluates whether a candidate can actually perform in your specific commercial environment.
Freelance platforms cannot verify whether a Paid Ads Manager has managed multi-platform budgets at scale, maintained attribution integrity across channels, or can navigate the changing ads landscape. Generalist recruiters match platform names on CVs.
They do not know the difference between a candidate who understands how Performance Max interacts with a Meta retargeting funnel and one who does not. We operate exclusively within SEO, Paid Media, and Growth: every assessment is built around real operational capability in paid acquisition.
Our average placement time is 22 to 25 days from brief to accepted offer, with 95% of roles filled within 28 days.
Traditional job board hiring takes 60 to 90 days and floods your pipeline with speculative applicants. We maintain an active pipeline of vetted Paid Media talent: practitioners we know, have assessed, and can brief against your role immediately. The speed comes from specialism, not shortcuts.
Every Search For Hire placement is backed by a one-year satisfaction guarantee. If the candidate leaves or fails to perform within 12 months, we replace them at no additional cost.
The guarantee is a commercial commitment grounded in process rigour. Every Paid Ads Manager we place is assessed across areas such as multi-platform campaign architecture, attribution accuracy, creative testing discipline, and stakeholder communication. We place with confidence because we evaluate with precision.
Yes. We place Paid Ads Managers across the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia, and have placed internationally beyond these core markets. We headhunt actively rather than posting regionally, which means candidate reach is defined by the role requirements, not by geography.
If your role is remote, hybrid, or requires relocation, we will structure the search accordingly and advise on salary benchmarking by market.
High-stakes roles require high-precision hiring. Tell us what you need. We will tell you whether we can place it and how.
