Director of Media Excellence

Agency: Omnicom Media

Job Function: Media

Job Subfunction: Media Operations
Job Description:
Omnicom Media
Director of Media Excellence, UK Media Operations
job description
Role holder
TBC
Location
Bankside Office: London
Reporting
Head of Operational Excellence (Amaia Las Heras)
Manages
Operational Excellence Manager
The role
The UK Media Ops team is being built at a critical point of transformation. The business needs clearer media operating standards, stronger operational discipline, better adoption of common processes and a practical way of turning governance into improved delivery across agencies and client teams.
Reporting to the Head of Operational Excellence, the Director of Media Excellence will lead the day-to-day media excellence agenda across UK Media Operations. The role is accountable for making best practice practical: translating operating standards into clear workflows, playbooks, training, adoption tracking and governance outputs that teams can use.
This role will manage the Operational Excellence Manager and provide leadership across process excellence, documentation, training, operational issue management, stakeholder engagement and continuous improvement. It will also work closely with Finance, Commercial, Activation, Analytics, agency operations and client teams to improve financial hygiene and reduce avoidable billing, debt and Mediaocean balance risks.
Key collaborators
Head of Operational Excellence
UK Head of Media Operations
Media Operational Excellence Manager
Business Operations Lead
Central OM Operations Team
Agency COOs, agency operations leads and client teams
Discipline operational leads and discipline teams
Finance, Commercial, Billing and Credit Control teams
Activation, Investment, Analytics, Data and Technology teams
EMEA Operations teams
Omni, Mediaocean and other platform owners
OGS/GCC and offshore/nearshore delivery teams
Vision
To build one joined-up discipline that works smarter, moves faster and delivers consistently high standards, giving teams and clients a better experience and the business a stronger platform for growth through automation, AI, data, operational discipline and clear governance.
Media Operations should be the operating backbone of the business: clearer standards, smarter workflows, stronger governance and better use of Omni, automation and AI to improve delivery at scale and remove friction across all agencies and disciplines.
Summary of the role
Lead the Media Excellence agenda across UK Media Operations, ensuring standards, playbooks, training and governance are clearly defined, maintained and adopted.
Manage the Media Operational Excellence Manager, setting priorities, expectations and development focus.
Translate Media Operating Standards into practical ways of working across planning, activation, analytics, finance and delivery workflows.
Own the structured approach to documentation, adoption, feedback, issue tracking and continuous improvement across priority media operations processes.
Work with Finance, Commercial, Billing and agency/client teams to improve financial hygiene, reduce billing and debt queries, and keep Mediaocean balances at minimal risk to the business.
Investigate recurring financial and billing issues, identify root causes and work with the right teams to prevent repeat problems.
Support the Head of Operational Excellence in embedding UK governance, compliance, CLM/Operational Foundations, Omni-related process controls and agency adoption.
Be the ultimate SME for financial systems, data and processes within Media Operations, setting strategic direction, owning complex diagnosis of root causes and working with stakeholders.
Responsibilities:
Media excellence, process and best practice
Lead the creation, maintenance and continuous improvement of practical Media Operating Standards across priority workflows.
Translate complex processes into clear playbooks, handoff guidance, process maps, decision frameworks and training materials.
Ensure process guidance is simple enough to use, strong enough to manage risk and aligned to the wider UK Media Ops governance model.
Review legacy and agency-specific ways of working to identify duplication, friction, gaps, rework and inconsistent delivery.
Work with agency and discipline leads to test standards and playbooks before wider rollout, making sure they work in practice.
Documentation, knowledge management and adoption
Own the single source of truth for media excellence documentation, playbooks, guidelines and training materials through the agreed repository.
Govern version control, publication standards and review cycles so teams can trust that materials are current and accurate.
Remove outdated, duplicated or conflicting guidance and ensure updates are communicated clearly to relevant teams.
Track adoption of new and existing standards, capturing agency feedback and turning it into improvement actions rather than simply reporting non-compliance.
Build a practical rhythm for launch communications, refreshers, process reminders and targeted support for teams with low adherence.
Training, capability and community
Design and oversee structured onboarding, refresher and targeted training programmes that improve adoption and confidence across agencies and disciplines.
Build role-specific training journeys for priority workflows, making sure training reflects current process documentation and agreed standards.
Partner with agency operations leads and discipline leads to embed process adherence through capability, not enforcement alone.
Track training effectiveness through adoption, feedback, process adherence and operational performance indicators.
Support the development of a media operations community that shares best practice, surfaces issues early and builds stronger operational discipline across agencies.
Financial hygiene, billing and Mediaocean risk control
Work closely with Finance, Commercial, Billing, Credit Control, Activation and agency/client teams to ensure financial hygiene is understood, followed and visible.
Help ensure agencies and client teams are adhering to agreed processes for booking accuracy, reconciliation, billing readiness, query resolution and debt prevention.
Investigate and diagnosing complex financial and billing issues, either owning the exercises or through the managed teams. Example issues will include recurring billing queries, debt blockers, aged items, missing or late bookings, not-vouched costs and unreconciled media balances.
Work with relevant teams to understand the root cause of financial hygiene issues, identify whether the problem is process, ownership, data quality, training or system behaviour, and agree actions to stop repeats.
Maintain visibility of Mediaocean balances and related risk areas, ensuring aged or unexplained balances are escalated early and do not build into material commercial exposure.
Partner with relevant Mediaocean workstream owners to move Mediaocean improvement activity forward where it supports feature enablement, cleaner process control or reduced balance risk, with minor setup or feature-enablement work routed to the right platform specialists, including Harvey where appropriate.
Support regular reviews with Finance and agency teams to keep billing and debt queries to a minimum and make sure issues have clear owners, actions and resolution dates.
Provide clear reporting to the Head of Operational Excellence on financial hygiene themes, risk exposure, recurring issues and improvements needed across agencies and client teams.
Governance, risk and issue management
Support the UK Media Ops governance model by surfacing issues, identifying patterns and turning risks into clear actions.
Maintain structured visibility of process feedback, risks, adoption gaps and operational issues across agencies and disciplines.
Contribute to governance forums with insight, trends, recommendations and clear status updates.
Identify recurring issues and systemic failures, not jus