The OpportunityThe Media Partnerships Manager is responsible for helping build, operate, and scale Pillar4 Media's Built-if-Sold (BIS) business. This role will manage strategic media partnerships and marketplace opportunities across the full partnership lifecycle, from market evaluation and commercial development through activation, performance optimization, renewal, and expansion.
Serving as a key connector between external partners and internal teams, the Media Partnerships Manager will develop partner strategies, structure commercially viable offerings, support negotiations, and coordinate the successful delivery of complex media programs. The role will work closely with Revenue Operations, Editorial, SEO, Paid Media, Finance, and other cross-functional stakeholders to translate partner objectives into scalable, revenue-generating solutions.
What You'll Be DoingReporting to the Director - Commerce Marketplace, the Media Partnerships Manager will:
- Built-if-Sold Business and Marketplace Strategy
- Support the development and execution of Pillar4 Media's Built-if-Sold marketplace strategy.
- Help define the strategic direction, value proposition, operating model, and growth plan for the BIS line of business.
- Identify emerging partner, category, audience, and commercial opportunities across Pillar4's media portfolio.
- Conduct market, industry, and competitive research to identify trends, whitespace opportunities, and potential partnership models.
- Translate business opportunities into clear strategies, commercial plans, revenue goals, and execution roadmaps.
- Evaluate prospective opportunities based on strategic alignment, revenue potential, operational feasibility, scalability, and partner fit.
- Develop recommendations regarding where the business should invest, test, expand, reposition, or discontinue marketplace offerings.
Strategic Partnership Development
- Identify, cultivate, and develop relationships with prospective media, advertising, and strategic partners.
- Build a qualified pipeline of partnership opportunities aligned with BIS growth objectives.
- Serve as a strategic thought partner to external organizations by understanding their business goals, challenges, audiences, and measures of success.
- Develop tailored partnership strategies and solutions that align partner needs with Pillar4's brands, capabilities, content, and audiences.
- Build relationships with partner stakeholders at multiple levels, including senior decision-makers and day-to-day operational contacts.
- Represent Pillar4 at partner meetings, conferences, industry events, and other business-development opportunities.
Commercial Strategy and Deal Development
- Develop commercial packages, partnership models, pricing strategies, media offerings, and deal structures in partnership with Sales and Revenue leadership.
- Create business cases, proposals, presentations, forecasts, and supporting materials used to evaluate and secure new opportunities.
- Develop net new monetization strategies and deal structures ensuring incremental value for Pillar4
- Assess revenue potential, cost, profitability, resource requirements, delivery complexity, and business risk before commitments are finalized.
- Support commercial negotiations involving pricing, deliverables, timelines, performance expectations, renewal terms, and other partnership considerations.
- Partner with Finance and Legal to ensure commercial terms are financially sound, operationally feasible, and appropriately documented.
- Translate broad partner concepts into clear scopes of work, internal requirements, deliverables, and measures of success.
- Establish commercial expectations, decision points, governance, and accountability for each partnership.
- Monitor pipeline progress, probability, forecasted value, and revenue performance against established goals.
- Identify opportunities to expand successful programs through renewals, additional brands, new services, increased investment, or broader partnership structures.
Partner Portfolio and Relationship Management
- Manage a portfolio of assigned marketplace partners and serve as a primary point of contact throughout the partnership lifecycle.
- Develop a clear understanding of each partner's business model, strategic objectives, priorities, challenges, and performance expectations.
- Build trusted, consultative relationships that position Pillar4 as a strategic partner rather than solely a campaign vendor.
- Develop partnership plans that outline objectives, opportunities, deliverables, timelines, communication expectations, and growth priorities.
- Lead regular partner check-ins, business reviews, performance discussions, planning sessions, and post-program evaluations.
- Coordinate internal and external stakeholders to ensure commitments are understood, appropriately resourced, and delivered.
- Proactively identifying partner needs, emerging opportunities, performance concerns, or relationship risks.
- Address partner questions and concerns with urgency, sound judgment, and a solutions-oriented approach.
- Maintain strong partner satisfaction while balancing external expectations with Pillar4's business priorities, capabilities, and standards.
- Travel as needed to support relationship development, sales efforts, campaign fulfillment, business reviews, and industry events.
Marketplace Operations and Infrastructure
- Build and continuously refine the processes, workflows, tools, documentation, and governance required to operate and scale the BIS business.
- Develop repeatable systems for opportunity intake, qualification, pricing, approval, contracting, onboarding, launch, fulfillment, reporting, renewal, and expansion.
- Build and maintain partnership trackers, pipeline documentation, commercial templates, playbooks, performance dashboards, and other operating resources.
- Establish clear roles, decision rights, communication rhythms, escalation paths, timelines, and handoffs across participating functions.
- Ensure partnership agreements and commercial commitments are translated into actionable internal plans.
- Document lessons learned, best practices, and repeatable approaches to improve future marketplace programs.
- Identify operational gaps, bottlenecks, or inconsistencies and recommend improvements that strengthen partner experience and business scalability.
- Help establish the infrastructure necessary to support increased deal volume, revenue growth, partner complexity, and future team expansion.
Cross-Functional Partnership and Execution
- Act as the central connector between marketplace partners and Pillar4's Sales, Revenue, Editorial, SEO, Analytics, Product, Finance, and operational teams.
- Translate partner objectives and commercial agreements into clear execution plans, deliverables, owners, milestones, and deadlines.
- Facilitate kickoff meetings, status discussions, decision-making forums, and post-program reviews.
- Align stakeholders when partnership opportunities require tradeoffs involving revenue, audience experience, editorial integrity, operational capacity, timing, or business risk.
- Provide internal teams with sufficient partner context to support effective decision-making and delivery.
- Keep stakeholders informed of progress, decisions, dependencies, results, and emerging challenges.
- Influence cross-functional stakeholders and create momentum without relying on formal authority.
- Hold internal and external partners accountable for agreed-upon actions, deliverables, and timelines.
- Escalate material risks, missed commitments, or strategic decisions with clear context, potential business impact, and recommended next steps.
- Balance competing priorities while maintaining focus on the marketplace opportunities with the greatest strategic and financial value.
Campaign Fulfillment and Partnership Performance
- Oversee BIS programs and marketplace partnerships from launch through completion, ensuring high-quality execution and partner experience.
- Confirm that deliverables meet contractual requirements, partner expectations, internal standards, and agreed timelines.
- Monitor campaign and partnership performance in collaboration with Analytics, Revenue, Editorial, SEO, and other functional partners.
- Analyze revenue, profitability, conversion, traffic, engagement, operational, and partner-performance data.
- Coordinate optimization efforts and recommend adjustments based on performance trends, partner feedback, and business objectives.
- Develop clear reporting and communicate results, insights, risks, and recommendations to internal and external stakeholders.
- Lead or support quarterly business reviews, campaign recaps, and other strategic partner discussions.
- Conduct post-program reviews to identify lessons, process improvements, and opportunities for renewal or expansion.
- Balance immediate campaign requirements with the continued development of sustainable and scalable business processes.
Revenue Growth and Business Performance
- Contribute to the achievement of BIS revenue, profitability, pipeline, and growth objectives.
- Provide leadership with regular updates on pipeline activity, partnership performance, revenue outlook, opportunities, and risks.
- Use performance data and market insights to inform pricing, packaging, partner strategy, and future investment decisions.
- Support annual and quarterly planning for the BIS business, including revenue assumptions, partnership priorities, and resource needs.
- Demonstrate accountability for both the financial results and operational effectiveness of the marketplace portfolio.
What You Bring- Bachelor's degree in business, marketing, communications, media, advertising, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
- Approximately 3-5 years of experience in digital media, strategic partnerships, business development, affiliate marketing, commerce, advertising, account management, revenue operations, or a related discipline.
- Experience developing or managing external partnerships with measurable commercial or strategic outcomes.
- Demonstrated ability to manage complex projects involving multiple internal and external stakeholders.
- Experience supporting proposals, pricing strategies, partnership structures, negotiations, or other revenue-generating initiatives.
- Experience working with performance-based, affiliate, advertising, commerce, content, or media partnerships preferred.
- Understanding of digital publishing, audience monetization, media performance, and partner-driven revenue models.
- Experience analyzing performance data and translating results into clear recommendations.
- Experience presenting to partners, senior leaders, or other executive-level stakeholders.
- Experience within digital publishing, affiliate commerce, lead generation, performance marketing, consumer marketplaces, e-commerce, or a portfolio of digital brands.
- Experience developing partnerships within health, wellness, fitness, financial services, technology, consumer products, or other highly competitive commerce categories.
- Experience commercializing digital products, proprietary data, audience insights, content capabilities, or emerging technology.
- Familiarity with AI-driven search, consumer discovery, recommendation platforms, or evolving AI Commerce models.
- Ability and willingness to travel based on business and partner needs.
What We Look For- Openness to feedback and collaboration: You'll be working closely with folks across different teams, so you'll need to be open to the process and accept feedback and critique.
- Strong communication skills: You'll have the ability to build relationships with external stakeholders, report up to internal stakeholders, and foster strong alignment with your team.
- Alignment with Pillar4's culture: We live by our values and expect our team to buy in.
- Act with focus
- Get after it
- Grow without limits
- Build the team
- Obsess Over Customers
- Commit to Service
- Entrepreneurial spirit: Our team members act like entrepreneurs in that we are incredibly driven, agile, goal-oriented, and are always up for a challenge.
