Director Marketing - Paid Search (PPC)

JOB DESCRIPTION FOR: 

Director Marketing - Paid Search (PPC)

Our Company

Established in 1996 in Amsterdam, Booking.com has grown from a small Dutch start-up to the third largest ecommerce company in the world. Booking.com is the largest business within Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) and accounts for the vast majority of Booking Holdings’ total revenue. Booking Holdings is a leading Fortune 500 e-commerce conglomerate with a market cap of approximately $102 billion (2021). Booking.com currently employs more than 13,000 employees in 214 offices in 70 countries worldwide.

With a mission to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, Booking.com invests in digital technology that helps take the friction out of travel. Booking.com connects travelers with the world’s largest selection of incredible places to stay, including everything from apartments, vacation homes, and family-run B&Bs to 5-star luxury resorts and even tree houses. The Booking.com website and mobile apps are available in over 40 languages, offer more than 28,984,513 total reported listings, and cover 142,259 destinations in 229 countries worldwide. Each day, more than 1,550,000 room nights are reserved on its platform. So whether travelling for business or leisure, customers can instantly book their ideal accommodation quickly and easily, without booking fees and backed up by its promise to price match. Via the customer experience team, customers can reach Booking.com 24/7 for assistance and support in over 40 languages, any time of the day or night. 

At Booking.com, we are all involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions we make are a reflection of our Values -  they reflect what is important to us, both as individuals and as an organization. 

When we use our Values to make decisions, we make a deliberate choice to focus on what is important. When Values are made explicit, they provide clarity on what “good” looks like. And when they are shared, they build unity in a group. They build culture.

• Think customer first. We obsess about adding value for our customers - guests, partners, colleagues - to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

• Own it. We deliver on our promises, make informed decisions and prioritize to get the important things done today.

• Learn forever. We are resilient, take time to reflect, and seek to learn – from colleagues, from the outside world and from our failures.

• Succeed together. We celebrate team success, through making connections, building trust and valuing the diverse perspectives of others.

• Do the right thing. We get the right results the right way. For each other, our communities and the world around us.

Booking.com Leadership Team

Chief Executive Officer, Glenn Fogel                                                                                                       

SVP, Chief Finance Officer (interim), Sue D’Emic     

SVP, Chief Marketing Officer, Arjan Dijk

SVP, Trips, Bryan Batista

SVP, Chief Technology Officer, Rob Francis

SVP, Chief Legal Officer, Maria Barros

SVP, Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano

SVP, Accommodations, James Waters

SVP, Fintech, Daniel Marovitz

For more information on the leadership biographies: please visit

Profile Director Marketing - Paid Search (PPC)

Booking.com’s Marketing organizational structure consists of 3 pillars: Marketing Channels, BU Marketing and Marketing Functions. Performance Marketing is one of our four channels where a huge proportion of our business comes through and has been one of the key factors in our growth and fundamental part of our overall business success story. At its core, it is about attracting relevant users to experience Booking.com, whilst driving towards and delivering measurable return on investment (ROI).  

Within Performance Marketing there are several teams, focusing on PPC (or paid search), meta search, SEO, marketing messaging, rewards and incentives and app marketing. For paid search we work with Google as well as other players like Bing, Yandex or local players like China’s Baidu amongst others. We advertise on what are called upper funnel keywords - things like ‘hotels’ or ‘things to do’ or ‘places to stay’ - down to ‘book a hotel in Amsterdam’, and all the different things a user may search for in between. Our aim is to always be at the top or as close to the top of the page as possible.

We have multinational teams in Amsterdam, Cambridge UK, Manchester UK, Boston US and Shanghai, and from those locations we cover the world, capturing everything from everywhere and manage adverts in 45+ different languages, across all the different parts of a user journey.

As Director Marketing - Paid Search you will manage all day-to-day operations of PPC search, overseeing strategy creation and execution across all global markets, (and supporting brands) in all markets whilst supporting all business units to deliver against transaction and profit targets.

The primary aim of the role is to ensure the effective implementation of Paid Search to Booking.com customers and potential customers to ensure customer equity is maximised. This person will need both experience of running Paid Search in house as well have strong experience leading Data Science Organisations as we run all bidding and content generation in house.

Key Responsibilities:

• Liaise with leadership / senior management to develop and implement Paid Search strategy and objectives consistent with the organization's overall strategy;
• Manages a team of employees and hires new employees.  Ensures the development of individuals within the organization. Coaches and directs people to allow them to achieve both organizational and individual objectives.
• Responsible for the financial delivery of the channel.
• Responsible for the day to day execution of the channel, i.e. content creation, algorithm and data quality both internally and externally to other departments.
• Own the road map for the future development of the channel to improve efficiency and mitigate risks from external sources.
• Work with our external partners to help shape their products in a way that works for us.

Ideal Experience & Skills:

• 10+ years relevant direct marketing experience within ecommerce or travel, of which at least 5+ years in performance marketing and preferably PPC.
• A proven track record of effective management of people in successful teams
• Knowledge of relevant industry trends shaping the online travel market 
• Excellent communication
• Strong analytical and problem solving abilities
• Ability to envision, articulate, and execute a compelling future for the business
• Ability to manage across teams, geographies, cultures and functions
• Ability to garner