About Fanatics Advertising

Fanatics Advertising is building the world’s leading sports media network, connecting brands with fans across Fanatics’ ecosystem of e-commerce, collectibles, media, and live events. We help advertisers reach highly engaged sports audiences through data-driven media products, unique commerce integrations, and premium sponsorship opportunities.

The Role

As Director, Ad Operations, you will be responsible for leading the executional backbone that ensures campaigns are delivered impeccably: pacing and performance, vendor / supply management (especially offsite and programmatic), and oversight of both our in-house and offshore ad operations resourcing. You will combine strategic leadership, technical acumen, and operational excellence to scale our advertising operations as we grow revenue, expand product offerings, and maintain high quality and efficiency.

What You'll Do:

Campaign Delivery & Pacing

• Leading the team that oversees the full campaign lifecycle: trafficking, creative QC, tags/pixels, implementation, pacing, optimizations, delivery.

• Develop frameworks for monitoring KPIs, budgets, pacing; identifying risks early and working with Sales to mitigate under-delivery or overspend.

Vendor & Offsite Supply Management

• Manage relationships with external vendors/supply partners (DSPs, SSPs, exchanges, measurement / verification partners).

• Ensure offsite supply sources comply with quality standards, delivery expectations, SLAs.

• Negotiate terms, service levels, pricing or fees with vendors as needed.

• Perform periodic audits of vendor performance and supply quality, remediating issues as needed.

Offshore / Distributed Resource Management

• Lead and oversee offshore teams or remote/international resources contributing to trafficking, QA, reporting, optimizations.

• Define roles, responsibilities, and workflows between in-house and offshore staff to ensure clarity, consistency, and efficiency.

• Set performance metrics, provide feedback, coaching, ensure synchronous work practices and communication.

Operational Process & Quality Controls

• Build, refine, enforce SOPs, escalation protocols, QA checkpoints.

• Own tag / pixel management, discrepancy resolution (1st/3rd-party), creative spec compliance.

• Implement tools / dashboards to monitor operational health (campaign delivery, pacing drift, vendor performance, ticketing for issues etc.).

• Ensure data / measurement integrity.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Leadership

• Partner with Sales, Product, Ad Product, Analytics, Finance, Legal to ensure smooth campaign hand-offs, pricing rules, inventory availability, technical feasibility.

• Provide support during large or strategic deals with campaign setup, special technical requirements, custom scopes, etc.

• Serve as escalation point for campaign delivery issues, vendor disputes or technical failures.

People Leadership & Team Development

• Manage and develop several managers/senior specialists in campaign operations / trafficking / QA.

• Plan and manage team priorities, capacity, resourcing (including offshore), headcount, training / upskilling.

• Promote high standards, accountability, continuous improvement culture.

Strategic & Continuous Improvement

• Identify operational bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and scale-ability risks; propose and lead process improvements or tool investments.

• Keep up with ad tech innovations, measurement changes (privacy, identity, cookieless, etc.), creative / format trends; ensure Fanatics stays ahead.

What We're Looking For:

• ~10+ years of experience in ad operations / digital advertising operations, campaign management or trafficking, with increasing leadership responsibility.

• Deep familiarity with ad serving systems, tags / pixel tracking, ad tech stack (DSPs, SSPs, exchanges, verification / measurement tools).

• Experience managing vendor / supply partnerships and offsite / programmatic supply.

• Proven experience managing distributed teams / offshore resources.

• Strong operational rigor: building workflows, enforcing QA, dealing with tags, discrepancies, performance issues.

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills; ability to work cross-functionally.

• Strong analytical skills and comfort with dashboards, reporting, KPIs, problem resolution.

• Ability to manage multiple simultaneous campaigns; prioritize issues; stay calm under operational pressure.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in commerce media, sports media, or brands with strong inventories and direct + programmatic mix.

• Prior experience with large campaign budgets and scale.

• Familiarity with video / CTV / OTT / live event ad formats.

• Experience managing or scaling an ad ops tech stack (automation tools, internal portals, workflow tools).

• Knowledge of privacy / identity / cookieless trends and how they impact operations.

The salary range for this position is $188,000 to $235,000, which represents base pay only and does not include short-term or long-term incentive compensation. When determining base pay, as part of a final compensation package, we consider several factors such as location, experience, qualifications, and training.