Performance Marketing Manager

About AppLovin AppLovin makes technologies that help businesses of every size connect to their ideal customers. The company provides end-to-end advertising solutions for businesses to reach, monetize and grow their global audiences. For more information about AppLovin, visit: www.applovin.com . To deliver on this mission, our global team is composed of team members with life experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives that mirror our developers and customers around the world. At AppLovin, we are intentional about the team and culture we are building, seeking candidates who are outstanding in their own right and also demonstrate their support of others. 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 se…