Senior Director, Integrated Local Media Planning

Senior Director, Integrated Local Media Planning

The Senior Director, Integrated Local Media Planning is a critical role within Tinuiti's Strategic Planning team. Serving as both the primary media planning lead on key client accounts and the subject matter expert responsible for advancing Tinuiti's Local Strategic Planning capability, this leader is essential to driving agency growth. The role requires a deep foundation in media planning and strategy, extensive experience leveraging research to unlock customer insights, and the ability to act as a trusted advisor to major clients. Within the Strategic Planning Center of Excellence, the Senior Director will scale the agency's local planning methodology, processes, tools, training, data requirements, and partner ecosystem to ensure high-quality execution across markets.

In this role, you will define high-impact media strategies across the customer journey that balance audience, channel, and context to deliver on client KPIs. You understand how national planning principles translate to local markets, including geographic nuances in audience composition, media consumption, cost, inventory, competitive pressure, and business opportunity. You determine when client goals demand a tailored local-market approach versus national, regional, or clustered strategies to optimize scale, efficiency, and business impact. Working closely with Client Partners, you will provide strategic guidance to expand media investments and strengthen agency relationships while fostering innovative, progressive local planning methodologies.

What you'll be doing:

• Lead the development and scaling of Tinuiti's local strategic planning capability within the Center of Excellence, establishing frameworks, tools, quality standards, and training for client teams.
• Serve as the agency's subject matter expert for market/DMA-level and geographically nuanced media planning.
• Orchestrate strategic media plans aligned with client business goals to build brand equity and accelerate profitable growth.
• Develop local planning frameworks that address market opportunity, audience concentration, media consumption, competitive pressure, footprint, and media economics.
• Determine optimal geographic investment levels (national, regional, market, or clustered) and establish market prioritization and clustering frameworks to identify differentiated strategies versus shared archetypes.
• Guide teams on translating national planning assumptions locally and building defensible recommendations when local-market data is directionally incomplete or unavailable.
• Establish best practices for local reach, frequency, duplication, weight, diminishing returns, and sufficiency planning.
• Partner with communications planners to ensure strategic alignment across audiences, messaging, and channels.
• Templatize and produce core outputs for Tinuiti's planning tool suite and oversee planner training on local tools, datasets, and principles.
• Partner with internal intelligence and tools teams to inform the evolution of Tinuiti's local planning tools and capabilities, bringing local planning expertise and practitioner perspective to requirements and solution development.
• Cultivate relationships with research, measurement, data, media, and technology partners to support local planning needs.
• Define how local planning principles apply across varied activation models and partner ecosystems to maintain quality standards regardless of activation path.
• Lead consultancy opportunities focused on media mix, audience development, and market-prioritization strategies.

Core Competencies:

• Local Media Planning - Deep expertise developing media strategies across DMAs, regions, store/service footprints, and multi-market structures.
• Market Prioritization & Architecture - Ability to structure geographic investments (DMA, regional, market clusters) using market opportunity, audience demand, footprint, competitive intensity, and media economics.
• Local Reach, Frequency & Sufficiency - Expert understanding of effective reach, frequency, duplication, and diminishing returns within individual local markets.
• Communications Strategy Partnership - Ability to partner with communications planners to align media with local messaging tasks and support client strategy discussions.
• Planning Tools - Extensive familiarity with local research tools, local video/audio measurement, demographic/geographic datasets, and competitive intelligence platforms.
• Data Judgment - Strong capability to triangulate datasets, construct defensible assumptions, and overcome limitations when local data is sparse or incomplete.
• Local Media Ecosystem - Deep understanding of cross-channel local media dynamics, inventory differences, pricing, buying practices, and measurement.
• Strategic Communication & Leadership - Skill in engaging stakeholders, collaborating across cross-functional teams, and communicating complex insights concisely.
• Thought Leadership & Innovation - Proactive insight into emerging media trends, market developments, and data-driven optimization strategies.

Requirements:

• 12+ years of progressive media strategy and planning experience, with significant leadership in local, market-level, or DMA-level planning for geographically complex businesses (e.g., multi-market, retail, franchise, or service-area footprints).
• Comprehensive cross-channel experience spanning linear and digital media, with deep expertise in video and social channels and market-specific dynamics.
• Hands-on expertise with industry planning and research tools (e.g., Kantar, Pathmatics, SimilarWeb) and local sources (e.g., Scarborough, Nielsen Local, MRI/NMI datasets).
• Demonstrated experience building, evolving, or scaling local media planning capabilities, including frameworks, tools, partner models, training, or standards used by other planners.
• Demonstrated ability to formulate defensible local recommendations when preferred data sources are limited or unavailable.
• Proven success serving as a trusted advisor to senior client leaders and managing relationships with local research, data, and media partners.
• Willingness to travel to onsite meetings 1-2 times per month as needed.
• Based in the New York metropolitan area or within reasonable commuting distance of Tinuiti's Manhattan office.

FLSA Classification: Exempt

Benefits:

Unlimited PTO: At Tinuiti, we believe you deserve time to rest, recharge, and enjoy life unplugged. When you prioritize time for yourself, you're able to bring your best self to work. That's why we offer unlimited paid time off, a fully remote environment, and flexibility to take the time you need, when you need it. On top of that, we provide 20 paid holidays, including multiple long weekends, to ensure you have dedicated time to step away and disconnect. We're proud to offer above-industry standard work-life balance, consistently rated as one of the most loved benefits by Tinuitians year after year.

Healthcare: Medical, Dental, Vision, Life & Disability, Flex Spending Accounts

Retirement: Match up to 4% of your contributions at 100%

Perks and Wellness: Fringe, Forma, Unlimited Telemedicine and Teletherapy available at no cost, Thankful giving, Equity

Parental Leave: Birthing parents receive 16 weeks of leave with 100% pay (partners 12 weeks) after the birth or adoption of a child.

Learning and Development: On-demand learning, mentorship program, leadership and management development programs and resources

Disclaimer: This description has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this position. The actual duties, responsibilities, and qualifications may vary based on assignment or group.