Lead Digital Marketing Manager

Job Purpose

We are looking for a Lead Digital Marketing Manager to join our Marketing team and play a key role in shaping how we invest, measure and maximise the impact of our paid media spend.

As a Lead Digital Marketing Manager, you will take ownership of Ounass's cross-channel paid media investment strategy, ensuring our marketing budgets are allocated effectively to drive sustainable growth, customer acquisition and commercial performance.

Reporting to the Director of Marketing, you will be responsible for defining budget allocation frameworks, establishing measurement standards, leading incrementality testing and owning the paid media forecast across our six GCC markets.

Working closely with our Paid Search, Paid Social, Influencer Marketing and other channel leads, you will set the investment direction, performance expectations and measurement frameworks that guide their execution.

This is a highly analytical and commercially focused role requiring someone who can translate complex marketing data into clear investment decisions, challenge existing measurement approaches and confidently present recommendations to senior leadership and Finance.

What You'll Be Doing

Paid Media Investment & Budget Allocation

• Own and manage the cross-channel paid media budget across Paid Search, Paid Social, Display, Programmatic, Affiliates and Influencer Marketing, covering the UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain.

• Define investment allocation frameworks, marginal efficiency targets, growth expectations and customer acquisition cost (CAC) thresholds to guide channel-level decisions.

• Lead the budget reallocation process through weekly pacing reviews, monthly investment rebalancing and quarterly resets aligned with business forecasts.

• Analyse channel and market performance to identify opportunities to optimise investment, improve returns and support business growth.

• Partner with Finance and Retail Media to distinguish brand-funded investment from Ounass-funded spend, ensuring accurate reporting of Net DM.

• Balance short-term performance efficiency with longer-term upper-funnel investment, assessing the commercial impact, expected returns and payback periods.

• Apply marginal economics and diminishing-returns analysis to inform investment decisions across performance marketing channels.

Marketing Measurement & Incrementality

• Establish and own the measurement framework used to evaluate paid media performance and guide budget allocation decisions.

• Lead the incrementality testing programme across key marketing channels, including geo holdout experiments, conversion lift studies and other testing methodologies.

• Partner with BI and Data teams to design experiments, interpret results and translate findings into actionable investment recommendations.

• Own the application and interpretation of Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) insights, identifying opportunities to improve channel allocation and overall marketing effectiveness.

• Bring together insights from platform attribution, GA4, app measurement platforms such as Adjust, and MMM to create a consistent view of marketing performance.

• Develop and interpret diminishing-returns curves across channels and markets to understand where additional investment generates incremental value.

• Work with Technology, BI and Data teams to ensure measurement accuracy across server-side tracking, consent management, app attribution and SKAdNetwork.

• Challenge attribution discrepancies and investigate data quality issues that could affect investment decisions.

Forecasting & Strategic Planning

• Own the weekly, monthly and annual paid media forecasts across channels and markets, with accountability for forecast accuracy.

• Lead the paid media planning process, providing accurate investment assumptions and performance projections for annual budgets and business reforecasts.

• Build investment scenarios that demonstrate the commercial impact of increasing, reducing or reallocating marketing budgets.

• Work with channel leads to establish market and channel-level performance targets aligned with overall business objectives.

• Partner closely with Finance to ensure marketing forecasts are commercially sound, measurable and aligned with business planning.

• Present and defend investment recommendations, forecasts and assumptions to senior leadership.

Performance Reporting & Commercial Insights

• Own the paid media performance narrative for the VP Marketing, Finance and other key stakeholders, clearly communicating performance drivers, risks and recommended actions.

• Partner with BI to develop a consistent source of truth for marketing performance reporting, reducing fragmented reporting and ensuring alignment across teams.

• Translate complex performance data into clear, actionable recommendations that support investment and commercial decisions.

• Provide category-level and brand-level investment insights to Commercial and Retail Media teams.

• Support key trading moments, including Ramadan, Eid, private sales and peak trading periods, through investment planning, performance analysis and forecasting.

• Develop concise, decision-focused reporting that allows leadership and channel teams to act quickly and confidently.

AI, Automation & Marketing Effectiveness

• Identify opportunities to automate performance reporting, budget pacing alerts, forecasting and investment allocation recommendations.

• Use AI and automation tools to improve analytical efficiency, streamline workflows and reduce manual reporting.

• Establish appropriate guardrails and measurement frameworks for platform-led automation, assessing performance against manual approaches.

• Continuously explore emerging technologies, analytical tools and measurement methodologies to improve marketing effectiveness.

• Measure and demonstrate the efficiency gains achieved through AI and automation.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Governance

• Work closely with channel leads, Finance, BI, Data, Growth, Commercial and Retail Media teams to ensure alignment on investment priorities and performance expectations.

• Manage and coordinate measurement initiatives involving Marketing Mix Modelling, lift studies and external marketing platform measurement teams.

• Establish and document clear standards for budget allocation, experiment design, forecasting and reporting.

• Ensure marketing investment decisions remain aligned with Ounass's luxury positioning, brand standards and long-term business objectives.

• Challenge investment opportunities or placements that may deliver short-term efficiency but compromise brand perception.

What We're Looking For

Experience & Expertise

• 8+ years of experience in performance marketing, with proven ownership of significant multi-channel paid media budgets, ideally within a scaled e-commerce or consumer business.

• Strong experience developing cross-channel investment strategies, allocating budgets across markets and demonstrating measurable commercial returns.

• Proven hands-on experience designing, evaluating and acting on incrementality studies, including geo holdouts and conversion lift experiments.

• Experience working with Marketing Mix Models (MMM), interpreting model outputs, challenging assumptions and translating findings into investment decisions.

• Demonstrated ownership of marketing forecasts, with accountability for forecast accuracy and commercial performance.

• Strong analytical capabilities, including proficiency in SQL and a solid understanding of statistical testing, sample size, statistical power, significance and experiment design.

• Working knowledge of GA4, mobile measurement platforms such as Adjust or AppsFlyer, including SKAdNetwork, and BI tools such as Tableau or Looker.

• Hands-on experience with Google Ads and Meta at scale, alongside a strong understanding of Snapchat and TikTok advertising platforms.

• Ability to challenge channel-level bidding strategies, campaign structures, attribution methodologies and optimisation approaches.

• Experience managing investment across multiple markets, ideally including KSA and UAE, with exposure to both web and app performance.

• Strong commercial understanding of key marketing and business metrics, including GMV, CAC, customer lifetime value (CLV), contribution margin, marginal returns and payback periods.

• Experience partnering with Finance, Commercial, BI and Data teams to support investment decisions and business planning.

• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to translate complex analysis into clear recommendations for senior leadership.

• Practical experience using AI tools to improve productivity, automate analysis and deliver measurable efficiencies.

• A degree in Marketing, Economics, Statistics or another quantitative discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

It Would Be Great If You Also Have

• Experience within luxury, fashion, beauty or premium e-commerce, particularly across GCC markets.

• Arabic language skills and a strong understanding of UAE and KSA consumer behaviour.

• Proficiency in Python or R, alongside exposure to modern data environments such as dbt, Athena or BigQuery.

• Experience building dashboards and analytical reporting solutions in Tableau, Looker or Looker Studio.

• Experience preparing structured investment recommendations and decision documents for senior leadership.

• Exposure to brand-funded marketing, co-op investment, Retail Media or partner-funded advertising, including reporting and commercial accountability.