President, Amplifi North America

Job Description:

Dentsu is an integrated growth and transformation partner to the world’s leading organizations. Founded in 1901 in Tokyo, Japan, and now present in over 145 countries and regions, it has a proven track record of nurturing and developing innovations, combining the talents of its global network of leadership brands to develop impactful and integrated growth solutions for clients. Dentsu delivers end-to-end experience transformation (EX) by integrating its services across Media, CXM and Creative, while its business transformation (BX) mindset pushes the boundaries of transformation and sustainable growth for brands, people and society. 

Amplifi is the investment, partnership, and commercial innovation arm of dentsu. Designed for the algorithmic era, we are obsessed with client outcomes; building next-generation solutions and innovative commercial models that deliver value for all.   We have over 4,000 dedicated professionals across all major markets.  Amplifi is led by local and global experts who foster valuable supply-side relationships.

Our mission is to harness the power of data-driven insights, cutting-edge technology, and creative thinking to unite brands with consumers, creating value for all stakeholders. This ethos mirrors the Japanese principle of Sanpo Yoshi, prioritizing satisfaction for sellers, buyers, and society – value for all. 

Through partnerships with all major media and ad-tech suppliers worldwide, we have delivered on this mission. Amplifi is not a media agency but is the partnership, investment, and commercial innovation arm of dentsu.  Amplifi services all dentsu clients through collaboration within our business and the wider communications ecosystem.

Our operational model has been centered around three core pillars: a unified procurement entity, proactive visibility of group media spend, and strategic partner selection and management. We deploy procurement-based techniques in the way we invest, whether that is on behalf of our clients or with our own money. Our approach isn't risk-averse; rather, it seeks to ensure fair and equitable outcomes for all parties involved.

Our commitment extends beyond transactions; we prioritize delivering value for all, and everything we do must align with this value proposition, otherwise we won’t do it.

Role:

The role will work with our key clients, partners, and be the voice of media’s investment, activation, and commercial innovation in the market. 

The role will oversee the scaled implementation of the existing business models that deliver value for all and the continued innovation of these, as the commercial engine of our media ++ strategy.

The role will be a key member of the media executive leadership team. Dentsu has multiple ‘practice areas’ described as media, creative, sports and entertainment, and CXM and integrated solutions, which connect these areas under our media ++ strategy. This role will be responsible for the areas of media identified and the commercialization of integrated solutions.

The Amplifi President will need to demonstrate the characteristics identified within the media ++ strategy, namely being open and interoperable and agile, as we create a service and sales culture and capability across the network.  This is designed to enable us to win in the market by delivering our clients a step change in their media outcomes and business performance over the short and; longer term.

Leading a team of approx. 1,500 professionals, The President, Amplifi – North America, is the senior-most supply-side focused leader in the region with the responsibility of driving growth and maximizing value for all, namely our clients, our business, our partners, and our people.  This role covers all areas of media activation (implementational planning and media investment/buying), partnerships, and trading and commercial innovation across dentsu agencies throughout the United States and Canada.

The role will lead the Amplifi management team Including: The Amplifi President for Canada, the Chief Commercial Trading Officer for Amplifi North America, the three media agency Chief Investment officers ‘CIO’s (iProspect, Carat, and dentsuX), our Chief activation officer, who is responsible for all implementational planning and media buying across the media practice, and the data & technology lead for Amplifi.

Key accountabilities:

• Be the escalation point and senior business and investment advisor to our clients.

• Engage and generate with key industry events, partners and initiatives that stimulate demand for dentsu group services and agencies.

• Growing existing client and supplier relationships with a focus on the latter as the key stakeholder for supply-side partnerships across dentsu media and its agencies in the market.

• New business and organic growth within the media practice and integrated solutions.

• Design, Implementation and scaling of existing and new business models that deliver value for all.

• Financial planning and delivery across annual targets and across the Mid-term Management plan ‘MTMP). The financial responsibility of the role is focused on the North American revenue across the media investment (implementational planning and activation/media buying), principal & proprietary solutions and the existing trading, performance and specialist channel related; service based, business(es)/models.

Role Requirements:

1. The role will work with our key clients, partners, and be the voice of media’s investment, activation, and commercial innovation in the market.
 

2. The role will oversee the scaled implementation of the existing business models that deliver value for all and the continued innovation of these, as the commercial engine of our media ++ strategy.

Work with the client and agency leads to develop and implement client investment strategies that deliver against their business objectives and marketing requirements. The CIO’s of the media agencies will report directly into this role. These roles cover:

The CIO is designed to cover all areas of the business strategy ‘Media ++’ that will enable them to architect and guide clients towards a modern media investment strategy built for the Algo Era. The role sits across all the business initiatives, i.e. principal and proprietary, integrated solutions E.g. retail media and modern CRM, data & technology, AI, Partnerships, and performance capabilities to enable them to deliver clients' business requirements via their media investment.  

Key Accountabilities

• Design and implementation of key account investment strategies that deliver against the client’s business requirements and therefore its marketing objectives through the agency.

• Enablement of the media ++ strategy through the consolidated investment strategies of delivering media and ultimately business outcomes for our clients.

• Supporting the renewal and new business efforts across the agency with proactive investment leadership.

• Delivering a market and industry leadership POV that stimulates demand for the agency and network services 

Key Deliverables

• Client value delivery Including but not limited to: Productivity and pricing commitments, Principal-based media efficiencies, and Proprietary solutions that drive increased marketing effectiveness

• Delivery of the partner-based investment targets, partner compliance, and strategic priorities

• Responsible for deploying P&P strategy across the agency client portfolio, including target setting and delivery tracking.

• Supporting the agency leadership to deploy the integrated solutions that are required to deliver client marketing requirements and the agency P&L across the mid-term management plan

Delivery of the client media and business outcomes: Delivery of all client commitments, across media pricing, value delivery, operational efficiency, and marketing effectiveness that lead to short- and long-term media outcomes and increased business performance for dentsu and its clients.

The Chief Activation Officer role and those situated within the agencies will report into this role and cover all media activation (implementational planning and media investment):

Key Accountabilities

• Leading the agency Activation teams across implementation planning and media investment for dentsu media in the USA

• Responsible for client activation delivery, including the campaign KPI deliverables, client outcomes, and productivity deliver commitments

• Design and implementation for operational management, including process improvement, programs, and solutions/products that increase our efficiencies across our end-to-end campaign activation

• Driving performance excellence, craft up-skilling, and deployment

• Deploying the growth solutions that will increase our clients' marketing effectiveness

Key Deliverables

• Employee engagement increases, reduced staff turnover, and automation metrics

• Delivery and development of client outcome targets as our core activation deliverable

• Near/offshore and Automation metrics to be established and delivered

• Increasing campaign and client marketing effectiveness with increased measurement tracking

• Principal & Proprietary delivery

The role will strategically develop and implement ways of working improvements, products, solutions, and partnerships that enable efficiencies and increased effectiveness across our services.  Ensure growth objectives for Amplifi are delivered that drive both top-line revenue as well as bottom-line increase margin contribution as outlined in the MTMP (2026-2028).

The Chief Commercial Officer role covers all areas of trading and commercial partnerships, principal business models, and proprietary solutions that maximize clients' marketing effectiveness.  Current solutions include: Modern Video, CTV, New Stream Media (Sell-side retail media), and dentsu.audiences (formerly Merkury).

Key Accountabilities and deliverables

• Management of the supply-side partnerships across the network at an enterprise level to enable value creation across media, creative, CxM, and data and technology.

• Development of the alternative network and hyper-growth partner segments to create value and scale capabilities across the group.

• Ensuring optimization of the traditional and next-gen techniques for transactions with partners, including Coalition partnerships, joint business planning, trading commitments, product development, system integration, against our open and interoperable approach, and principal trading.

• Identify gaps and opportunities at a client, agency, and group level across trading and partnerships.

• Leverage investment, including acquisition or joint ventures, within the business development process. 

Other areas of focus and accountability include:

• Work with the Business Development and Growth community to pitch, win, retain, and prospect new business. Lead the Amplifi elements of the new business pipeline and pitch co-ordination as required.

• Upscale capability of Amplifi team to remain competitive in pitches and deliver a compelling response for each opportunity.  Provide clear direction, ambition and empowerment to successfully assimilate new opportunities at speed.

• Support the identification, development, and funding requirements via effective budgeting or investment cases for opex, capex, and working capital that is required to deliver against the MTMP.

• Working with the media practice lead and the Global President, Amplifi to ensure that the vision, strategy and deliverables of the MTMP for media are delivered. 

Mobilization of Talent

• In conjunction with relevant stakeholders, bring the talent vision and proposition to life across the network

• Actively work to attract, recruit and develop the very best talent from across the network and externally, to build cohesive and effective pitch/client teams.

• Identify and manage high performers and business critical roles.

• Develop and implement talent against a clear succession plan for all senior roles including this one in the region

Professional Skills

• Recognized industry leader with a track record of delivering substantial new business and client growth.

• Proven ability to manage a trading book, develop new revenue streams and to extract value from media partners

• Proven leader with deep expertise in all aspects of product development and business transformation

• Track record of identifying and fostering talent and building high-performance teams.

• Deep understanding of the full media experience of brand and performance, including content

• Adept at understanding the mechanics of local, multi-market, regional and global clients in media.

• Substantial experience with all media income streams and media income diversification.

• Understands how to deliver through and with others in a way that motivates and drives high performance.

• Experience of winning, delivering and retaining clients.

• Digitally savvy and experienced, with a passion for new technology.

• Expert networking skills to generate new business leads as well as internally in matrix management to leverage the capabilities across our wider network.

• High influencing skills and high client effectiveness.

• Change agent both internally and externally.

• Strong track record of delivering growth through an ability to spot a commercial opportunity and turn it into reality.

• Sees themselves as both a technical expert and a business leader.

Location:

Brand:

Time Type:

Contract Type: