Digital-Advertising Acquisition-Cost Control Architect — Consumer Apps

The mandate

User-acquisition spend is committed through social, search, affiliate, creator and programmatic channels, yet Finance receives agency invoices weeks after Growth has optimised campaigns on privacy-constrained attribution. Platform credits, volume rebates, make-goods, foreign exchange, invalid traffic and shared creative production are handled outside campaign ledgers. Reported cost per acquired subscriber therefore cannot be bridged reliably to cash, payable, contract or cohort contribution.

The six-month deliverable is an invoice-to-cohort control architecture covering authorisation, purchase obligation, campaign taxonomy, placement delivery, privacy-safe conversion evidence, agency fee, platform credit, rebate, fraud adjustment, currency, accrual, settlement and management attribution. It must allow Finance to state what was spent and owed while Marketing Science expresses attribution uncertainty without converting a modelled conversion into accounting evidence.

Milestone one at week four accepts the spend-channel and contract inventory; week ten approves source, estimate and rebate hierarchies; week eighteen completes three campaign-close rehearsals; and week twenty-six accepts the control catalogue, cohort-cost bridge, close runbook and client certification. Fee release follows written acceptance, including client reproduction from raw invoices and event summaries without consultant-built workbooks.

Acceptance requires Growth Finance and Controllership to reproduce eight unseen campaigns from approval through delivery, invoice, accrual, rebate, payment and cohort reporting; explain modelled versus observed acquisition; and close two regions within the agreed tolerance and timetable. One affiliate-fraud case and one retroactive platform-credit case must be resolved with evidence, accountable judgement and no silent restatement of prior cohorts.

The client will provide media and agency contracts, purchase orders, delivery reports, attribution summaries, privacy constraints, invoices, credits, bank settlements, exchange rates, chart of accounts, campaign taxonomies and named control owners. The consultant will not select channels, set bids or budgets, identify individual users, approve invoices, book entries, renegotiate agencies, operate attribution models or attest financial statements.

Why this is external work

Growth teams see platform dashboards, agencies see contracted media and Finance sees invoices and cash, but no client owner connects those records at campaign and cohort level. Privacy changes made deterministic user matching unavailable, exposing controls that confused attribution confidence with spend completeness. Independent architecture can establish common evidence without favouring a channel, agency or measurement vendor.

What you will own

• Map approval, commitment, delivery, attribution, invoice, accrual, credit, rebate, settlement and cohort-report events by channel and entity.
• Define evidence hierarchies for delivered media, estimated liability, agency fee, invalid traffic, make-good, currency and contractual rebate.
• Reconcile platform and agency records to purchase obligations, payables, bank cash, general ledger and management acquisition reporting.
• Separate observed conversion, modelled attribution, incrementality estimate and accounting spend so confidence is visible rather than blended.
• Design month-end treatment for late invoices, cross-market campaigns, shared creative, retroactive credits and disputed or fraudulent traffic.
• Rehearse affiliate fraud, privacy-signal loss and platform-credit scenarios with Marketing, Privacy and Accounting retaining their decisions.
• Deliver data lineage, control catalogue, cohort bridge, tolerance policy, close runbook, exception ownership and implementation backlog.

Candidate qualifications

• Directed growth-finance, media-controllership or acquisition-economics architecture for a global digital consumer business.
• Reconciled agency, advertising-platform and affiliate evidence to commitments, accruals, credits, cash and management reporting.
• Governed cohort-cost attribution after privacy restrictions changed conversion observability and model confidence.
• Resolved rebates, make-goods, invalid traffic, shared creative, foreign exchange and late invoices without rewriting commercial history.
• Built controls jointly with Marketing Science, Media, Procurement, Privacy, Data Engineering, Payables and Controllership.
• Transferred reproducible campaign-close evidence and exception ownership without leaving proprietary models or consultant-operated workbooks.

Non-negotiables

• Can complete all four campaign residencies and three cohort-cost reproduction workshops during six months.
• Will disclose relationships with advertising platforms, agencies, affiliates, attribution vendors, audit firms and consumer-app competitors.
• Brings invoice-to-cohort acquisition-cost control across several paid channels; media planning or dashboard analytics alone is insufficient.
• Will not choose channels, set bids or budgets, identify users, approve invoices, book entries, renegotiate agencies or provide assurance.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe an acquisition-cost bridge you rebuilt after privacy or attribution evidence changed.
2. 49 words maximum. Which rebate or invalid-traffic case would you use to test campaign-close controls?
3. 49 words maximum. What must remain distinct between advertising spend evidence and modelled cohort attribution?