Commercial Product Manager - 12 Months FTC

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The Role / Position Overview

The role sits within the Commercial Product team and is specifically focussed on the development and delivery of audience data strategy. As part of the wider digital development team, it is the Commercial Product team’s remit to support the development of new and innovative advertising products that bring value to the business by improving the FT’s ability to deliver marketing objectives for advertising clients, in turn generating revenue.

Reporting to the Head of Innovation, the Commercial Product Manager will be expected to own the Commercial Product strategy for the FT’s audience data. The candidate needs to be an expert in stakeholder management, strategy setting and roadmap development, whilst understanding the technical requirements that underpin the digital advertising business. In addition, they will be expected to ensure that all of the audience data development work is in line with the business-wide first-party data strategy. Whilst the candidate won't have any direct sales targets, they will be expected to translate the revenue goals with product development efforts.

Main duties and responsibilities: 

• Define and deliver a robust strategy for the collection, quality and ongoing monetisation of the FT’s audience data

• Translate the FY strategy into quarterly roadmaps that are ambitious, achievable, and are directly linked to the Commercial Product strategic pillars 

• Lead the delivery and implementation of the agreed roadmap

• Responsible for stakeholder management, including translating commercial ideas and considerations to the other teams, capturing sales requirements, and sharing relevant updates regularly

• Work closely with colleagues from the subscriptions business to ensure that data captured will help with driving both subscriptions and user engagement

• Lead on business OKRs in relation to the collection and monetisation of audience data, including ensuring these OKRs are supported by the FPD and Ads Dev teams. As appropriate seek to align both OKRs and roadmaps across teams

• Follow any FPD updates from the broader business, with specific attention to where digital advertising can:

  • Partner with other teams to expand data capabilities

  • Ensure that no changes are made that will have a downstream commercial risk

  • Seeking to ensure data capture is aligned across departments and business units

• Partner with the Ad Platforms team to integrate, migrate, and troubleshoot any technology (owned & operated) that underpin our audience targeting capabilities

• Work with the Business Intelligence and Data teams to ensure they are able to generate user insights that are applicable across FT owned & operated

• Provide occasional information sharing and guidance to sales and delivery teams, ensuring they know our current stance on privacy, data collection and targeting, and longer term plans

• Analysing trends, keeping up to date with new technology opportunities around data collection, segmentation, modelling and targeting within the media landscape 

• Spot opportunities such as high sell through audiences that achieve a high yield and where appropriate work with other teams such as subscriptions to understand if there are opportunities to grow the scale of the audience

Skills: 

• 5+ years of experience in media and/or 3-4 years of experience in product management.

• Strong experience with data and analysis with the ability to discover insights relevant for business growth. Ideally literate in SQL

• Have knowledge of media industry metrics and data, including digital media and web analytics

• Good interpersonal skills, with the ability to have technical and business conversations

• Ability to manage multiple projects, across several teams within multiple markets

• Excellent presentation, analysis and technical troubleshooting skills

• Proactive and always looking for ways to constantly improve performance

• Proven experience in developing and implementing a strategy

• Proven experience in end to end development of commercial products

Key interactions

• Sales management

• Subscriber acquisition teams

• Data & Business Intelligence team

• Data Strategy & Governance team

• Various Product development teams

• Consumer Revenue Group - Marketing Performance Customer Marketing teams

• FT Professional Operations team

• FT Live

What’s in it for you? Our Benefits

Our benefits vary depending on location, but we are committed to providing best in class perks across all our offices as well as an inclusive environment to develop your career. Examples of our benefits include; generous annual leave allowances, flexible working (including working from home), medical cover, enhanced maternity & paternity packages, subsidised gym memberships and Giving Back opportunities. Full details of our benefits can be found here.

Further Information

The FT is committed to providing an inclusive working environment for all. We are an equal opportunities employer who seeks to recruit and appoint the best talent regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We have implemented a hybrid working model and we also promote flexible working and will consider specific requests around flexibility for all roles where it can be accommodated. Please let us know if you require any adjustments as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements, or have any questions, [email protected] and a member of our team will be happy to help.

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