Head of Data – Publicis Media Africa

Job Description

Overview

Role Purpose

The Head of Data will serve as the regional champion for Publicis Groupe’s global data, identity, and governance products — including the Connected ID framework, and Groupe-wide AI and data platforms.

This is a hands-on, entrepreneurial individual-contributor role focused on enriching, expanding, and operationalizing global assets within the African context. The role bridges global product teams and local market execution — ensuring African data partnerships, regulatory realities, and audience behaviors are fully reflected in Groupe systems and activation strategies.

Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities

1. Regional Data Champion & Integration

• Act as the custodian and evangelist for Groupe global data products, ensuring their effective use across South Africa and the continent.
• Translate global frameworks into local activation roadmaps for planners, strategists, and buyers.
• Ensure interoperability between Epsilon/Connected ID and local client, DSP, and publisher ecosystems.
• Serve as the Africa liaison to global data and AI leadership, providing feedback and market intelligence.

2. Data Enrichment & Partnership Expansion

• Identify, evaluate, and integrate local and regional data partners (telcos, retailers, fintechs, publishers, etc.) to enrich the global identity graph.
• Apply deterministic and probabilistic models to build layered audience intelligence suitable for activation.
• Oversee compliance, data quality, and contractual governance in all partner integrations.
• Maintain metadata, lineage, and cataloging for new data sources to ensure transparency and auditability.

3. Audience Profiling, Segmentation & Activation

• Develop audience taxonomies, personas, and segment definitions aligned to global ID and taxonomy standards.
• Build reusable data products and segment templates for planners and buyers to activate across digital and offline channels.
• Collaborate with Ad Operations and digital teams to ensure precision in tagging, matching, and attribution.
• Measure segment performance, match rates, and activation ROI, using insights to refine strategy.

4. Data Governance, Stewardship & Risk

• Champion data ethics, transparency, and fairness in all modeling and activation.
• Implement local stewardship frameworks, defining accountability for data domains and ensuring adherence to Groupe policies.
• Lead incident response and escalation for any local data-related risk or breach, coordinating with legal, IT security, and global governance teams.
• Ensure full compliance with POPIA, GDPR, and Groupe data-handling standards.

5. Change Management & Adoption

• Build structured adoption roadmaps and training programs to embed data-driven ways of working across media teams.
• Track and report usage KPIs; run feedback loops to improve adoption and usability.
• Create case studies demonstrating ROI and efficiency gains from data-driven activation.
• Act as the internal educator and advocate for data literacy among planners, buyers, and clients.

6. Measurement, Attribution & Commercial Impact

• Develop frameworks for attribution, incrementality, and test-and-learn experiments to quantify the impact of data-driven targeting.
• Partner with client teams to prove commercial value, helping drive client retention and upsell.
• Contribute to pitch narratives and client workshops, translating technical models into simple, outcome-based language.

7. Cross-Functional Integration & Engineering Liaison

• Partner with engineering, IT, and AdTech teams to ensure API integrations, data pipelines, and schema alignments are optimized for local needs.
• Participate in architectural decisions that affect scalability, latency, and data accuracy across activation environments.
• Document and monitor data flow, lineage, and SLAs to maintain reliability and performance.

8. Innovation, Research & Future Readiness

• Stay current on emerging identity, privacy, and AI technologies — from clean rooms and differential privacy to zero-party and contextual data models.
• Pilot new innovations with global teams and local partners; document and share learnings to strengthen Publicis Africa’s leadership position.
• Design for scalability and future team expansion, mentoring analysts or contractors when growth allows.

Qualifications

Skills & Experience

• 8–12 years’ experience in data strategy, audience planning, or analytics, ideally within a media, adtech, or consulting environment.
• Strong grasp of identity resolution, CDPs/DMPs, segmentation logic, and programmatic activation workflows.
• Proven experience operationalizing global data products locally — including Epsilon, Connected ID, or similar frameworks.
• Deep understanding of African data ecosystems, privacy laws, and data-exchange realities.
• Demonstrated ability to enrich datasets, design segments, and activate them end-to-end.
• Excellent communicator able to simplify technical concepts for business audiences and clients.
• High entrepreneurial drive; thrives in ambiguous, build-from-scratch environments.
• Familiarity with SQL, BI tools (Power BI, Looker Studio), or Python for prototyping and validation is advantageous.

Additional information

Success Metrics

• Growth in data-driven planning and buying adoption.
• Number and quality of local data partnerships and integrations.
• Demonstrated ROI uplift, efficiency gains, and precision improvement from data activation.
• Adoption and usage of Epsilon/Connected ID tools among teams and clients.
• Training reach, literacy scores, and case study outputs.
• Positive data compliance audits and zero incident breaches.
• Tangible contribution to client growth, retention, and new-business wins.

Mindset & Culture Fit

• Operates like a founder-builder, comfortable with autonomy and experimentation.
• Balances strategic vision with practical delivery.
• Naturally collaborative; navigates global–local dynamics with influence and diplomacy.
• Passionate about data innovation, responsible use, and client value creation.