Digital Trends
ABOUT DIGITAL TRENDS MEDIA GROUP Digital Trends Media Group (DTMG) is a digital media company headquartered in Portland, Oregon. Through a portfolio of consumer brands including Digital Trends, DT en Español, The Manual, and 21 Oak, we help millions of readers each month discover the technology, lifestyle, and home content that matters to them. We also operate email newsletters, video, and CTV distribution alongside our owned sites. ENGAGEMENT SUMMARY DTMG is hiring an experienced Ad Operations Manager as an independent contractor to own the technical execution layer of our advertising business across all DTMG properties. This covers two things at once. First, the programmatic monetization of our own inventory, which runs today through Google Ad Manager, a client-side Prebid wrapper, Amazon TAM, Google Open Bidding, and a roster of exchange, video, native, adblock-recovery, and CTV demand partners. Second, the trafficking and delivery of direct-sold campaigns and sponsorships, which is a smaller book today and expected to grow. You will work directly with the Head of Client Solutions and Account Manager team. You are the person DTMG relies on to make sure inventory monetizes cleanly, campaigns launch correctly, delivery holds to spec, and every flight closes and bills accurately. This Is a Hands-On Seat There is no ad ops team beneath this role. There is no agency layer and no offshore support pool. You are the person who logs into the ad server, builds the line item, reads the Prebid config, sets up the deal, chases the discrepancy, and pulls the report. You will have vendor partners to escalate to and a manager to align with, and that is the extent of it. If you have spent the last several years assigning trafficking to others, managing a team that does this work, or operating primarily in a commercial capacity, this is not the right engagement. If you are the person your last employer came to when something in the ad server broke, keep reading. SCOPE OF THE ENGAGEMENT Owned From Day One Sell-side programmatic operations on DTMG owned and operated inventory: Google Ad Manager, a client-side Prebid wrapper, Amazon TAM, Google Open Bidding, and a roster of exchange partners including PubMatic, Magnite, OpenX, Index Exchange, Sharethrough, Equativ, Media.net, and TripleLift. Video monetization via Connatix, native via Nativo, adblock revenue recovery via Blockthrough, and CTV inventory including Roku. PMP and programmatic guaranteed deal operations: deal setup and deal ID management on the sell side, PG line items in the ad server, no-bid and underdelivery diagnosis, and deal performance reporting. The working relationship with DTMG's platform and monetization partner, Fabrik. You will work directly with Fabrik on price floors, ads.txt edits, wrapper configuration, and placement setup. This is a hands-on technical partnership. Direct-sold and sponsorship campaign trafficking, delivery, and reconciliation across all DTMG sites. Manually sold newsletter sponsorships: one-off sponsored placements, including creative QA, link tracking, and per-send reporting. Ad quality, verification, and brand safety, including the relationship with our verification vendor. Expected to Sit With This Seat in Future Ad stack migration and simplification. DTMG intends to move off the current Fabrik platform and consolidate the ad stack. Timing is not yet set. Whoever holds this seat is expected to own that migration: vendor evaluation, wrapper and ad server rebuild, demand partner re-onboarding, compliance file reconstruction, and revenue continuity through the cutover. Buy-side programmatic campaign execution on behalf of clients: DSP setup, audience targeting, bid strategy, and optimization. If you have run this before, say so in your application. Explicitly Out of Scope Programmatic advertising inside newsletters. That is auto-managed by the newsletter platform and is not this seat's responsibility. Key Responsibilities 1. Campaign Trafficking and Pre-Launch QA Traffic every direct-sold and sponsorship campaign before launch: line item setup, priority and pacing configuration, creative specifications, ad tag implementation, and pre-flight testing across desktop and mobile. No campaign goes live without a trafficking sign-off from this seat. You own the quality bar for what reaches a DTMG reader. Maintain naming conventions, key-value taxonomy, and ad unit hierarchy so the network stays legible. 2. Ad Server and Technical Ad Operations Own Google Ad Manager setup, maintenance, and day-to-day operation across all properties. Manage tag management, pixel implementation, and third-party tracking and verification integrations. Be the internal technical authority on ad ops. When something breaks, you own the diagnosis and the fix. 3. Sell-Side Yield Operations Monitor and report fill rate, eCPM, session RPM, viewability, timeout and bid rates, and revenue by site, by placement, and by demand partner. Work directly with Fabrik on price floors, demand partner mix, wrapper timeouts, and placement configuration. Bring specific, quantified change requests and verify the result after each change. Own ads.txt hygiene: validate the file on a documented review cadence, coordinate with Fabrik for edits, and separately verify that DTMG's seller entries are declared correctly in each partner's sellers.json (correct name and domain, seller\ type of PUBLISHER, not flagged confidential, matching seat IDs in ads.txt). Verify that consent signals (IAB TCF for EEA and UK traffic, and applicable US state signals) are passing correctly. Stale or malformed files cost bids before an auction starts. Monitor invalid traffic and made-for-advertising exposure; escalate to partners with evidence when rates move. 4. PMP and Programmatic Guaranteed Deal Operations Set up and manage private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed deals: deal creation, deal ID distribution, targeting and package configuration, and PG line items in the ad server. Diagnose deals that are not spending: deal ID mismatches, floor conflicts, targeting overlaps, buyer-side seat issues, and inventory availability are all on you to isolate before escalating. Report deal performance back to the Head of Client Solutions and Account Managers; flag which deals are worth renewing, repricing, or retiring. 5. Ad Quality, Verification, and Brand Safety Own ad quality posture across all properties: creative review, category and advertiser block lists, competitive exclusions, and rapid response on bad-creative, redirect, and malvertising reports. Own the operational relationship with DTMG's verification vendor. Configure and maintain the integration, monitor viewability and IVT reporting, act on what it surfaces, and use it as evidence when escalating to demand partners. Monitor ad-driven page performance impact including layout shift, main-thread contention from auction and bidder scripts, and creative weight. Diagnose and escalate to Product and Engineering with specifics. 6. Newsletter Sponsorship Operations Traffic manually sold newsletter sponsorships and one-off sponsored placements: creative QA before send, link and UTM discipline, and per-send delivery and engagement reporting back to Account Managers. Programmatic newsletter demand is auto-managed by the newsletter platform and is out of scope. 7. Pacing, Delivery, and Billing Reconciliation Monitor all active campaigns daily for pacing, delivery, and discrepancies. Flag risk to the Head of Client Solutions and Account Managers before it becomes a client problem, with a proposed fix attached. Reconcile campaign billing against insertion orders at close, and reconcile programmatic revenue across partner dashboards and the ad server monthly. Coordinate with Finance so invoicing is accurate and on time. 8. Reporting, Automation, and Documentation Deliver post-campaign delivery reports and contribute performance data to wrap reports and client business reviews. Automate recurring reporting rather than rebuilding it by hand. Use the Google Ad Manager API, Looker Studio, scripting, and AI tooling to reduce manual reporting time. Maintain living documentation for trafficking standards, campaign workflows, partner contacts, and escalation paths. 9. RFP and Pre-Sale Support Provide ad ops specs, inventory availability, cost estimates, and platform recommendations during the proposal process, and sanity-check what sales is about to promise against what the stack can actually deliver. The responsibilities above are representative of the engagement. Scope is expected to expand as the business grows. Qualifications Required 3+ years of hands-on ad operations experience at a publisher, network, or agency, with direct daily ownership of an ad server. Equivalent practical experience considered. Demonstrable hands-on Google Ad Manager experience. You should be able to build a line item live on a screen share and explain your choice of type, priority, and pacing. Hands-on experience setting up and troubleshooting PMP and programmatic guaranteed deals from the publisher side. Working knowledge of header bidding and Prebid: what a wrapper does, how timeouts and floors affect revenue, and how to read a config and spot a problem. Practical experience diagnosing delivery discrepancies, tracking failures, and creative rendering issues, including comfort in browser developer tools and network request inspection. Experience with tag management, pixel implementation, and third-party tracking and verification. Comfort with billing reconciliation and insertion order management. Strong attention to detail across many simultaneous campaigns, and the discipline to run a daily check without being reminded. Clear written English. You will be documenting and escalating in writing across time zones. Reliable high-speed internet, a backup connection or plan, and a professional remote setup. Strongly Preferred Publisher-side yield experience: floor strategy, demand partner evaluation, supply path optimization, and ads.txt hygiene. Hands-on experience with a verification platform such as Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, or HUMAN, on the publisher side. Experience through an ad stack migration or monetization replatform: moving ad servers, swapping wrappers, or consolidating demand partners without losing revenue in the transition. Familiarity with video and CTV monetization, native placements, or adblock revenue recovery. Reporting automation experience: Google Ad Manager API, Looker Studio, BigQuery, Python or SQL, or comparable. Prior work with US-based digital publishers as an independent contractor. Meaningful Bonus Qualification Hands-on, cost-effective paid audience acquisition experience. We are specifically interested in someone who has bought traffic or subscribers efficiently and can show the math: content amplification (Taboola, Outbrain, or similar), paid social for newsletter list growth, or newsletter-to-newsletter paid recommendation. If you can talk credibly about cost per session against session RPM, or cost per subscriber against subscriber lifetime value, say so in your application and lead with it. Someone who can profitably buy audience is worth considerably more to us than someone who cannot, and we have structured compensation to reflect that. AVAILABILITY DTMG is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and operates on US Pacific time, with Account Managers and clients on US Eastern time. This engagement requires a reliable, predictable daily overlap window with US business hours. For candidates in the Philippines: the workable pattern is an evening-to-overnight local shift, roughly 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM Manila time, which covers 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM Pacific. Please only apply if that schedule genuinely works for you long term. A same-day response expectation applies to delivery-critical issues inside your overlap window. Outside it, next-business-day is fine. Compensation Paid monthly in USD against invoice. Rate reflects location, experience, and demonstrated hands-on capability. Final rate and payment terms are defined in the independent contractor agreement. Compensation for this role is above market for candidates who bring paid audience acquisition experience in addition to the core ad ops skill set. FIRST 90 DAYS Days 1 to 30 Complete access and onboarding; produce a written map of the current ad server structure, demand stack, deal inventory, and reporting sources as you find it. Deliver an ad stack audit: compliance file status, wrapper and floor configuration as currently set, placement inventory, active PMP and PG deals, and the three highest-value issues you found with your recommended fix and expected impact. Complete a full compliance file cleanup pass with Fabrik. Audit DTMG's seller declarations across every partner's sellers.json and report any mismatch, wrong seller\ type, or malformed file. Take over daily pacing and delivery monitoring and establish the daily check routine in writing. Days 31 to 60 Own trafficking end to end with no shadowing; publish the trafficking standards and QA checklist you will work to. Run one full monthly billing reconciliation cycle and hand Finance a clean close, including programmatic revenue reconciled across partner dashboards. Audit every active PMP and PG deal for spend; bring a repricing or retirement recommendation on deals that are not performing. Stand up an automated recurring revenue and delivery report that replaces manual reporting. Days 61 to 90 Deliver a yield review across all properties with prioritized, quantified recommendations; land at least two agreed changes with Fabrik and verify the result. Deliver an ad quality baseline: verification configuration reviewed, block lists rationalized, and a quantified read on what the ad stack is contributing to page performance. Present a scope proposal for Phase 2, including what you would take on and what it should be worth. ENGAGEMENT TERMS This is an independent contractor engagement and not an employment relationship. The contractor controls how and when the work is performed, subject only to the agreed overlap window and delivery SLAs, and supplies their own equipment and workspace. The contractor is not required to work exclusively for DTMG. The contractor is responsible for all applicable taxes, registrations, and social contributions in their jurisdiction. DTMG does not provide health insurance, retirement benefits, paid time off, or other employee benefits. Payment is monthly in USD against invoice via the agreed method. A completed W-8BEN is required before the first payment. The agreement includes confidentiality and intellectual property assignment terms. Tool and platform access is scoped to the role and revoked at termination. DTMG retains ownership of all accounts, networks, and data, including the ad server network. The engagement begins with a 90-day paid trial period against the deliverables above. Either party may terminate with written notice per the contractor agreement. How To Apply Email HR@digitaltrends.com with the subject line " Ad Operations Manager Contractor, [Your Name] ." Please include: Your resume or contractor profile, your location and time zone, and your monthly rate expectation in USD for full-time-equivalent scope. Short answers to three questions (a few sentences each): (1) Describe the last three things you personally built, broke, or fixed inside an ad server, specifically enough that we can tell you did it yourself. (2) Tell us about a delivery discrepancy or revenue drop you diagnosed, what the cause turned out to be, and how you found it. (3) Describe a PMP or PG deal that was not spending and how you got it unstuck. If you have paid audience acquisition or ad stack migration experience, include one example with actual numbers. Pay: Php150,000.00 - Php250,000.00 per month Benefits Flexible schedule Paid training Work from home Work Location: Remote
Digital Trends
