Director, ESPN Paid Media

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

The Growth Marketing team is tasked with driving new subscriber acquisition & driving Disney Streaming’s profitability business objectives for ESPN DTC and The Disney Bundle. The team is responsible for the planning, execution, and optimization of user acquisition and performance marketing campaigns. The ideal candidate has a passion for the digital media landscape and understands the intricacies and unique attributes of every step in the marketing funnel. The successful candidate will bring a highly analytical, creative, and flexible growth mindset to the role, which will be critical to deliver breakthrough thinking for this channel.

We are seeking a strategic and results-driven Director of Growth Marketing to lead paid acquisition and performance marketing for ESPN’s Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) business, including our ESPN DTC, bundle and sport specific ad-on offerings. This leader will oversee the end-to-end paid media strategy driving subscriber growth across ESPN’s streaming products, while managing a high-performing team responsible for growth media + messaging strategy, media plan development and activation, sports tune-in, and real-time campaign pushes and optimization.

This role sits at the intersection of performance marketing, growth strategy, and live sports, ensuring campaigns effectively capture demand around key sports moments while driving efficient subscriber acquisition at scale.

What Sets This Role Apart

• Opportunity to shape the growth strategy for one of the world’s most iconic sports brands.

• Direct impact on subscriber growth for ESPN’s streaming products.

• A unique blend of performance marketing, innovation, and live sports activation.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business Administration, Communications, Economics, Data Analytics, or a related field required.

• Strategic Paid Media Leadership & Business Alignment - Serve as the primary liaison between Media and ESPN DTC business stakeholders, translating profit objectives into paid media strategies that drive acquisition, engagement, and revenue growth.

• Cross-Functional Partnership & Growth Planning - Partner with product, analytics, programming, finance, and marketing leadership to align media investment strategies with key sports tentpoles, programming priorities, and seasonal growth initiatives.

• Paid Media Messaging Strategy - Lead the strategic direction of performance-driven creative, ensuring messaging, formats, and assets are optimized for platform performance, audience relevance, and conversion impact including our approach to tune-in and DCO messaging.

• Live Sports Campaign Activation & Weekend Operations - Oversee operational readiness and real-time campaign activation during major sports, content and live event moments globally, ensuring agile response to programming changes and audience demand spikes.

• Testing, Innovation & Performance Experimentation - Champion a culture of continuous innovation by advancing structured testing and experimentation across media strategy, audience targeting, creative approaches, and emerging platforms, leveraging insights to unlock new growth opportunities and improve acquisition efficiency.

• Investment Optimization & Measurement Strategy - Guide data-driven decision making through performance analysis, experimentation frameworks, and attribution insights to continuously optimize media investment against CPA, LTV, and subscriber growth targets.

• Multi-Channel Performance Marketing Oversight - Oversee the execution and optimization of paid media across social, search, programmatic, video, and emerging platforms, ensuring cohesive full-funnel strategies that scale subscriber acquisition.

• Operational Excellence & Team Leadership - Establish best-in-class operating processes, performance frameworks, and team workflows that enable scalable, efficient campaign execution while fostering a high-performance team culture.

Basic Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in performance marketing, paid media or growth marketing. 

• Experience with sports, live event marketing and real-time campaign activation. 

• Proven success driving customer acquisition for subscription, DTC or digital products. 

• Deep expertise across performance channels including paid social, search, programmatic and video platforms.

• Demonstrated success integrating creative strategy with performance marketing to drive measurable results. 

• Experience overseeing large-scale, multi-channel paid media investments nationally 

• Experience leading and developing high-performing marketing teams. 

• Strong analytical mindset with experience leveraging data, experimentation, and attribution insights to drive decisions.

• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment and manage real-time marketing opportunities tied to live events. 

Preferred Qualifications

• MBA or Master’s degree in Marketing, Business, Analytics, or a related discipline preferred.

• Additional coursework or certifications in digital marketing, performance marketing, media analytics, or data science are a plus.

• Familiarity with advanced measurement approaches, including experimentation, incrementality testing and multi-touch attribution. 

• Background in media, entertainment, streaming ecosystems.

• Experienced working with matrixed organizations and partnering across marketing, analytics, product and content teams.

The hiring range for this position in New York, New York is $172,100 - $236,600 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.