Chief Operating Officer — Streaming Portfolio

The mandate

This streaming portfolio has expanded its advertising-supported services and attracts demand for premium, addressable audiences. Commercial growth is being constrained by operations rather than market interest. Inventory forecasts differ from what content rights and playback rules allow; campaigns require manual setup across systems; creative defects appear late; measurement discrepancies create makegoods; and ad decisioning can degrade the viewing experience during the most valuable content.

The group is appointing a Chief Operating Officer to own the campaign-to-viewer chain. The COO will be accountable for advertising operations, inventory readiness, campaign delivery, partner coordination, customer operations, service management and operating transformation across the streaming portfolio. Sales retains advertiser relationships, product and technology own platforms, and editorial leaders own content. The COO must integrate their commitments into reliable execution.

This planned succession is not a licence to maximise ad load or cut operations until failure becomes invisible. The board expects higher yield from better quality, fewer preventable makegoods and a service experience that preserves subscriber and audience value. The COO must make operational constraints visible before inventory is sold and ensure recurring failure changes the underlying design.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in Los Angeles, the role influences approximately 900 employees and material partners across the United States and a wider international region. The perimeter includes inventory and campaign operations, ad trafficking, quality, scheduling, customer and advertiser support, service management, vendor operations and transformation. Critical interfaces include sales, pricing, content rights, product, ad technology, playback engineering, data, measurement, privacy, editorial standards and finance.

Inventory is not merely available viewing time. Rights, territory, plan, audience consent, device, category, frequency, sponsorship and content suitability determine what can be sold. Event peaks and newly released titles create scarcity that average forecasts obscure. The operating model must represent these constraints before booking.

Campaign delivery spans direct reservation, sponsorship, programmatic guaranteed and auction channels. Each carries different creative, data, pacing, measurement and remedy obligations. External platforms and verification providers can affect outcome while providing incomplete evidence. The COO needs clear service ownership across those organisational and contractual seams.

First-year agenda

The first seventy-five days will trace representative campaigns from proposal through invoice and post-campaign review. The COO will compare sold inventory, rights and consent eligibility, creative receipt, setup, decisioning, playback, measurement, makegood, billing and cash. Cases will include a premium launch, a sponsored placement, a programmatic campaign and a delivery dispute.

An authoritative inventory process will then connect content schedule, viewing forecast, rights, ad load, consent, platform capability, reservations and frequency. Forecasts will show confidence and scenario, particularly around premieres and live content. Sales teams must see inventory that can actually be delivered, with approval required for controlled overbooking or substitution.

Campaign intake will become a productised workflow. Standard formats, audience definitions, assets, tracking, claims, category and deadlines will be clear. Validation will occur when there is time to correct a defect, not immediately before launch. Complex sponsorship and custom production will have named operational leadership and a critical path.

Trafficking and quality will use automation with accountable exceptions. Creative scanning, format, link, audio, caption, data and suitability checks can be mechanised, but ambiguous content requires skilled review. Approvals and changes will be traceable. Repeated agency or advertiser defects will shape lead times and commercial terms.

Playback experience will sit inside operational performance. The COO will monitor ad start, latency, rebuffer, volume, repetition, frequency, blank time and return to content by device and geography. Yield gains that cause cancellation, complaint or abandoned viewing will be challenged. Safe fallback may include a house message or content return rather than an unsuitable advertisement.

Measurement and reconciliation will be designed before campaign launch. Definitions, currencies, time zones, filters and discrepancy thresholds will be agreed. When sources diverge, teams will investigate cause and preserve evidence. A makegood may resolve the advertiser obligation, but the underlying inventory, setup or measurement defect remains open until corrected.

Makegood governance will expose true opportunity cost. The business will record the campaign purpose, failed obligation, remedy, inventory quality, timing and customer acceptance. Premium future inventory cannot be consumed casually to close an old problem. Material remedies require commercial and operational approval appropriate to the displaced value.

Partners will be tiered by operational criticality. Ad servers, decisioning platforms, measurement vendors, exchanges and service partners will be tested for performance, evidence, incident response, security and exit. Joint exercises will cover peak demand and compound failure. The COO will reduce dependence where a partner cannot explain delivery.

The operating organisation will move from functional queues to accountable campaign and platform services. Work-in-progress, exception age and recurrence will guide capacity. By year-end, the portfolio should deliver more contracted value from existing audience supply, with lower makegood exposure, faster clean billing and fewer viewer-impacting defects.

Leadership responsibilities

The COO will run an integrated advertising-operations forum and advise the group sponsor on delivery, capacity and risk. They will maintain one operational forecast across content, sales and platforms. Commitments that cannot be delivered as sold will be surfaced before signature, with alternatives.

They will build leadership across campaign operations, service management and customer support, establishing career depth in a field often dependent on informal experts. Teams will be encouraged to stop unsuitable or defective work and required to distinguish prudent control from delay without ownership.

During material advertising or playback incidents, the COO will establish command across operations, technology, commercial, privacy and communications. Recovery must protect viewers and advertisers, and post-event work must remove recurrence rather than merely allocate makegoods.

Measures of success

The executive committee will track deliverable inventory, sell-through, net yield, campaign setup, pacing, completion, discrepancy, makegood, billing and cash. It will show premium inventory consumed by remedies and distinguish commercial change from operational failure.

Viewer measures include ad-start success, playback impairment, repetition, frequency, complaint, abandonment and subscription impact. Operational health includes exception volume, recurrence, manual intervention, partner performance, incident recovery and leadership coverage. Gross impression delivery alone will not demonstrate success.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring more than 28 years in streaming, advertising operations, broadcast, digital platforms or another real-time transaction environment. They must have led campaign or inventory operations at material scale and improved yield through execution quality. Direct experience with streaming playback is valuable.

The board will seek examples of correcting false inventory, changing a makegood policy and reducing ad-related viewing failure across product and operations. Candidates should understand rights, consent, ad serving, programmatic channels, measurement, service management and revenue operations.

The successful COO will be commercially alert and operationally exact. They must challenge sales promises without becoming a blocker, engage credibly with engineers and treat the viewer experience as part of campaign delivery.

Compensation and appointment terms

Annual base compensation is expected between USD 500,000 and USD 750,000, with annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will balance delivered yield, viewer experience, makegood reduction, operating resilience and leadership. Final terms will reflect comparable streaming-operations scale and verified forfeited awards.

Confidentiality

The portfolio remains unnamed because inventory, advertiser commitments, platform defects and audience behaviour are sensitive. Detailed information will follow identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must not submit campaign records, subscriber data, incident evidence or proprietary platform reports from another organisation.