Head of Agency, EMEA - Ad Solutions

About the Team

OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. In support of that mission, the Ads Solutions team partners closely with advertisers, agencies and strategic partners to help businesses unlock value through AI-powered advertising solutions while maintaining strong standards for user trust, platform integrity and responsible innovation.

As OpenAI’s advertising business continues to scale globally, the Head of Agency, EMEA will play a critical role in developing strategic agency partnerships, accelerating advertiser adoption and shaping how agencies help their clients succeed with OpenAI. You will work closely with EMEA and global leadership to translate our advertising strategy into a clear plan for the region’s agency ecosystem.

About the Role

We are seeking an Head of Agency, EMEA - Ad Solutions to lead and scale OpenAI’s agency partnerships across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. You will own the regional agency strategy, building relationships with agency holding companies, their networks and leading independent agencies to drive sustainable revenue growth and advertiser success. This role is based in London and reports to the Head of Ads Solutions for EMEA.

This is a highly strategic and hands-on leadership role. You will engage senior agency executives, develop joint business plans and commercial partnerships, and work with country sales and customer success teams to turn regional agreements into meaningful local execution. You will help agencies build the knowledge, capabilities and confidence to incorporate OpenAI’s advertising solutions into their clients’ marketing strategies.

You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Marketing, Operations and Policy teams to ensure agency and advertiser feedback informs product development and go-to-market decisions. Working alongside global agency teams, you will align international partnerships with the needs of EMEA markets and help establish scalable ways of working across the region.

The ideal candidate combines deep knowledge of the EMEA agency landscape with strong commercial judgement, executive influence and operational rigour. You are equally comfortable negotiating a strategic partnership, working with local teams to unlock client opportunities, and helping agency leaders understand the possibilities of AI-powered advertising.

In this role, you will:

• Develop and execute OpenAI’s EMEA agency strategy, prioritising partnerships, markets and growth opportunities across agency holding companies, networks and independent agencies.

• Own agency partnership revenue goals and business performance, working with country leaders to establish clear targets, accountabilities and execution plans.

• Build and maintain executive-level relationships with agency leaders across management, investment, trading, strategy, planning, activation, data and measurement.

• Develop joint business plans that connect agency priorities with advertiser outcomes, with clear commitments, milestones and measures of success.

• Lead the development and negotiation of regional trading agreements and strategic commercial partnerships, working closely with Finance, Legal and regional leadership.

• Translate regional and global agency agreements into local activation, coordinating with country sales and customer success teams on account plans, advertiser onboarding and growth.

• Expand the number of agency clients advertising with OpenAI and deepen adoption across relevant products and use cases.

• Partner with Marketing and customer-facing teams to deliver agency education, leadership engagement and enablement programmes that build lasting capability across planning and buying teams.

• Establish a disciplined operating cadence for pipeline management, forecasting, partnership reviews and tracking delivery against commercial commitments.

• Define clear ways of working across agency, direct advertiser, country and global account teams to coordinate customer engagement and support shared growth.

• Bring agency and advertiser insights to Product, Engineering and leadership teams, helping identify opportunities to improve the customer experience, measurement and product adoption.

• Provide strategic direction and coaching to colleagues working on agency partnerships across EMEA, building shared playbooks and consistently high standards of execution.

• Represent OpenAI’s advertising offering in senior agency discussions and industry forums, maintaining a strong commitment to user trust and responsible innovation.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 15+ years of experience in the advertising industry, including significant experience in agency partnerships, digital advertising sales or senior agency leadership.

• Have a proven track record of exceeding revenue targets and building strategic agency partnerships across multiple EMEA markets.

• Bring deep knowledge of the EMEA agency ecosystem and established senior relationships across agency holding companies, networks and independent agencies.

• Have experience developing and negotiating complex trading agreements, joint business plans and multi-market commercial partnerships, and translating them into measurable results.

• Understand how agency investment decisions are made and can build relationships across executive leadership, trading, planning, activation, data and measurement teams.

• Can articulate a compelling business case for a new advertising platform, connecting brand and performance objectives with relevant products and credible measurement.

• Combine strong strategic thinking with a bias towards execution, operational excellence and personal accountability.

• Are highly data-driven and comfortable using analytics to prioritise investment, assess partnership performance and identify opportunities for growth.

• Have experience leading complex initiatives across distributed teams and influencing senior stakeholders without relying on direct reporting relationships.

• Enjoy coaching and developing colleagues, sharing expertise and helping teams build effective agency partnerships.

• Thrive in ambiguous, fast-changing environments and enjoy building new commercial models, processes and partnerships from the ground up.

• Are passionate about AI and excited by the opportunity to shape how agencies and advertisers adopt transformative technologies responsibly at scale.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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