Performance Marketing Manager

About Gist

Gist is a new social media platform for people who want substance — practical, thoughtful content that spans philosophy debates, city-specific recommendations, seasonal gift guides, and wellness tips. Across categories like travel, food, career, and family, we describe it as "a handbook for the curious."

Gist is built by AppLovin Corporation — a company that hit $5.3B in revenue last year and sits alongside Google and Meta as one of the world's leading ad tech platforms. Fortune recognizes AppLovin as one of the Best Workplaces in the Bay Area, and the company has been a Certified Great Place to Work for the last four years (2021–2024).

The Role

We're hiring a founding Performance Marketing Manager to own all of paid growth for Gist — every channel, every dollar, every partnership. You'll set the performance marketing strategy, build the measurement foundation, and run the testing loops across Meta, TikTok, Google, and programmatic that give us real control over CAC from day one. No team to delegate to, no playbook to inherit. You are the expert in the room, and everything paid runs through you.

What You'll Own

Every paid channel. You are the channel manager across the full performance marketing mix: Meta, TikTok, Google, programmatic, ad networks, and any emerging channel worth testing. You decide where we spend, how much, and why — and you live with the results.

Off-platform partnerships. Beyond self-serve ad platforms, you will identify, negotiate, and manage relationships with external partners — media companies, OEM and on-device distribution partners, ad networks, affiliate and performance platforms, publisher direct buys, and other non-standard acquisition channels. You own these relationships end-to-end: partner evaluation, deal structure, execution, and ongoing performance management.

Budget and efficiency. Own the monthly performance marketing budget with full accountability to CAC, CPI, LTV, and ROAS. Allocate across channels and partners dynamically based on performance, scale what works, cut what doesn't, and report spend decisions clearly to leadership.

Measurement and analytics. Work on tracking setup to extract meaningful signal — diagnosing performance shifts, identifying what's working and what isn't, and translating data into clear actions. You are comfortable going deep into the numbers independently, spotting anomalies before they become problems, and working cross-functionally with product, data, and engineering teams to investigate and resolve issues collaboratively.

Creative and channel testing. Run structured tests across audiences, creatives, bidding strategies, ad formats, and partner inventory. Treat every campaign and partnership as a hypothesis. Document what you learn and build a compounding playbook over time.

The full funnel. You are accountable not just for installs but for quality users. Partner with product and growth teams to understand post-install behaviour, feed those insights back into performance marketing strategy and creative direction, and optimise toward activation and retention, not just volume.

New distribution thinking. A new social platform lives or dies by how it finds its first million users. Beyond standard channels, you will proactively explore non-obvious distribution: influencer/KOL paid amplification, content seeding partnerships, cross-platform distribution deals, incentivised install ecosystems, and anything else early data suggests is worth testing.

What We're Looking For

● 3-7 years of brand-side performance marketing experience, with direct ownership of budgets and outcomes for a consumer app, marketplace, or digital product

● Proven experience driving growth from cold start — you have launched performance marketing for a new product or market from zero, not just optimised an existing system, and you know what it takes to find the first users before there is any data to work with

● Hands-on fluency across Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads Manager, and Google Ads; programmatic and ad network experience a strong plus

● Demonstrated experience managing off-platform or non-self-serve partnerships — ad networks, OEM or device partnerships, media direct buys, affiliate or performance platforms, or similar; you have negotiated deals and managed these relationships independently

● Mobile attribution tooling experience with Adjust or equivalent; able to set up and own measurement infrastructure end-to-end, not just read reports someone else configured

● Thinks in the right metrics: CAC, CPI, LTV, ROAS, Day 7/30 payback, and funnel conversion rates — and can diagnose when numbers move and why

● Strong negotiation and partner management skills; comfortable building and managing external vendor and partner relationships independently

● Senior individual contributor mindset — you thrive working independently, go deep on execution without needing a team beneath you, and bring enough seniority to set strategy and defend decisions to leadership without hand-holding

Nice to Have

● Experience running performance marketing specifically for a social, entertainment, or consumer app

● Exposure to influencer or KOL-driven paid amplification as an acquisition channel

● Familiarity with incrementality testing, geo-splits, or media mix modelling

● SQL or BI tool fluency (Looker, Tableau, Metabase) for self-serve analysis

What We Offer

● Top-of-market compensation

● Full ownership of a critical function from day one, inside a company with the infrastructure, ad tech depth, and platform relationships to back you up

● A lean, high-trust environment where decisions move fast and your impact is direct and visible