Amazon Advertising Manager
Rockstar is recruiting for a marketplace management firm that specializes in operating brands' presence on Amazon, Walmart, Target Plus, and other channels. The client handles catalog, content, retail operations, and advertising for brands in CPG, cosmetics, skincare, apparel, footwear, and handbags. They are seeking a manager to lead their advertising and media program for a portfolio of client brands.
About the Client
The client manages the marketplace business for brands that can't afford to get it wrong. They handle catalog, content, retail operations, and advertising across Amazon (Seller Central and Vendor Central), Walmart Marketplace, Target Plus, and other emerging channels, and they run an AI Agentic Commerce practice building their own tooling for this work.
Their clients span consumer packaged goods, cosmetics, skincare, apparel, footwear, and handbags. They hire them to operate their channel, not to advise from a distance.
The Role
They are hiring a manager to run the advertising and media program for a portfolio of client brands, and to lead the analysts who execute it.
The position exists because strategy has outgrown a single seat. Their analysts are strong at execution — campaign builds, bid management, optimization, reporting — but they need someone above them who owns the plan: what the strategy is, what it costs, what it should return, and how it gets sold to the client. You'll be the person client leadership talks to about media, and the person their analysts come to when they don't know what to do next.
The work runs on two clocks. Quarterly and annually you're planning: building the media plan and budget for each brand, forecasting the sales that spend produces, and getting client sign-off. Weekly you're operating: reviewing performance with your analysts, deciding what to shift, catching problems before the client does, and pushing the tests that inform the next plan.
The hard part isn't campaign mechanics — it's judgment under incomplete information. You'll commit to a forecast while a client's inventory position is uncertain, defend upper-funnel budget that won't read cleanly for two months, and distinguish a strategy that isn't working from one that hasn't had time. You'll also be asked to find growth in accounts where the obvious moves are already made, which means identifying demand the brand isn't capturing rather than optimizing what's already there.
You'll have real latitude over strategy, budget, and how your team works, and they'll expect you to own outcomes rather than effort. You'll partner with their Strategy & Implementation Team on retail readiness and their Design Team on creative, since performance in these channels is capped by the quality of what the ads point to.
Amazon is their center of gravity, and Amazon DSP and Amazon Marketing Cloud are central to how they differentiate. This is not a Sponsored Products–only role.
What You'll Own
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Media planning: Annual, quarterly, and event-level plans across Amazon Sponsored Ads, Amazon DSP, Walmart Connect, and Target Roundel — channel and tactic mix, funnel allocation, and spend timed to the calendar that matters. Plans should account for inventory, retail readiness, competition, and seasonality, reserve budget for testing, and state assumptions clearly enough to defend six weeks later.
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Forecasting and budget management: Budget forecasting, pacing, and sales forecasts that connect spend to topline results. Scenario ranges with stated assumptions, not single-number promises. Efficiency targets managed without losing sight of incrementality.
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Analysis: You'll do the analytical work yourself rather than wait on a dashboard — interrogating search term, placement, product-level, DSP, and business reports, and using AMC for path to purchase, audience overlap, frequency, cross-channel assist, and new-to-brand contribution. They want people who know what question they're asking before they query, can tell signal from a short