User Acquisition Manager

About Crunchyroll

Founded by fans, Crunchyroll delivers the art and culture of anime to a passionate community. We super-serve over 100 million anime and manga fans across 200+ countries and territories, and help them connect with the stories and characters they crave. Whether that experience is online or in-person, streaming video, theatrical, games, merchandise, events and more, it’s powered by the anime content we all love.

Join our team, and help us shape the future of anime!

About the role

As a Senior Manager, User Acquisition – Paid Social, you will lead the strategy, execution, and optimization of paid social acquisition across multiple markets. You will own a significant area of the user-acquisition portfolio and be accountable for delivering sustainable subscriber growth, marketing efficiency, and measurable business impact.

You will operate as a senior individual contributor and subject-matter expert by translating global growth priorities into integrated, market-relevant strategies across established and emerging social platforms. You will independently address complex performance challenges, establish scalable operating practices, and influence portfolio strategy, investment allocation, and go-to-market decisions across Marketing, Creative, Product, Analytics, Finance, and regional teams.

Core Areas of Responsibility

Paid-Social Strategy and Business Ownership

• Own the paid-social user-acquisition strategy for a significant portfolio of markets, platforms, campaigns, or audience segments, aligned with broader growth and subscriber objectives and the strategic direction established by Growth Marketing leadership.
• Develop and execute full-funnel strategies across Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and emerging social platforms, with particular emphasis on performance-driven acquisition and conversion.
• Translate company and global growth priorities into actionable channel strategies, investment recommendations, testing roadmaps, and market-specific execution plans.
• Develop annual and quarterly portfolio plans, including strategic priorities, investment scenarios, performance targets, and key business assumptions.
• Manage performance against defined business outcomes, including subscriber acquisition, customer acquisition cost, return on advertising spend, lifetime value, conversion, retention quality, and incremental growth.
• Identify emerging opportunities, performance risks, and changing market conditions and independently recommend adjustments to strategy, investment, and execution.
• Make day-to-day portfolio and campaign investment decisions within approved budgets and escalate material changes that involve significant financial or business risk.
• Balance global consistency with regional consumer behavior, cultural considerations, platform dynamics, and local market requirements.

Performance Optimization and Measurement

• Establish scalable optimization frameworks across audience segmentation, bidding, placement, campaign structure, creative testing, and budget allocation.
• Use advanced performance analysis to diagnose complex acquisition challenges and determine appropriate corrective actions.
• Partner with Analytics and Data Science to strengthen attribution, incrementality testing, forecasting, experimentation, and performance measurement, including the evaluation of data limitations and conflicting performance signals.
• Evaluate performance across markets and platforms to identify systemic trends, scalable practices, and opportunities to improve portfolio-level efficiency.
• Develop business cases and investment recommendations using performance data, market insights, subscriber economics, and expected financial return.
• Establish channel benchmarks, performance standards, reporting practices, and decision frameworks that improve the quality and consistency of paid social execution.
• Synthesize complex performance data into portfolio-level insights to inform broader growth marketing strategy, forecasting, and investment planning.
• Identify measurement risks and limitations and clearly communicate their implications for business decisions.

Creative and Experimentation Leadership

• Define paid-social creative strategy in partnership with Creative, Brand, Regional Marketing, and external agency teams, using performance evidence to influence creative priorities and resource allocation.
• Establish a structured experimentation roadmap encompassing audiences, formats, messaging, platform capabilities, landing experiences, and conversion opportunities.
• Lead complex, multi-market tests from hypothesis development through execution, measurement, interpretation, and broader application.
• Translate performance data into clear, creative insights and actionable recommendations for internal and external partners.
• Ensure creative approaches reflect platform-specific consumer behavior, cultural nuance, brand standards, and regional market needs.
• Evaluate emerging tools and practices for analytical reliability, brand suitability, operational risk, and measurable business value before recommending broader adoption.

Cross-Functional and Global Leadership

• Serve as a senior paid-social subject-matter expert and strategic advisor to Growth Marketing and cross-functional leaders.
• Influence acquisition priorities, resource allocation, creative investment, and go-to-market decisions across multiple teams and regions through data-supported recommendations and clear articulation of business trade-offs.
• Lead complex, cross-functional initiatives involving Marketing, Creative, Product, Analytics, Finance, and regional stakeholders from problem definition through implementation and performance evaluation.
• Present performance results, strategic recommendations, business risks, and investment opportunities to senior leaders.
• Build alignment among stakeholders with different priorities, market perspectives, and operating requirements, resolving complex issues or escalating decisions with material financial, strategic, or reputational implications.
• Develop scalable playbooks, governance practices, and knowledge-sharing mechanisms to elevate paid social capabilities across the organization.
• Represent paid-social priorities in broader growth planning and ensure that market, platform, and audience insights inform cross-functional decisions.

Agency and Partner Leadership

• Lead the strategic direction, performance expectations, and operating cadence of external agencies and platform partners.
• Hold agency partners accountable for execution quality, innovation, financial stewardship, and achievement of defined business outcomes.
• Partner with Procurement and Finance, as appropriate, to evaluate agency scope, platform investment, and commercial effectiveness.
• Provide recommendations regarding agency selection, scope, performance remediation, and renewal based on business requirements and demonstrated results.
• Build productive relationships with major and emerging social platforms to identify new capabilities, strategic opportunities, and competitive insights.
• Use agency and platform relationships to identify emerging industry practices and determine their relevance to Crunchyroll’s acquisition strategy.

Functional Leadership

• Provide subject-matter guidance, coaching, and informal leadership to other user-acquisition and marketing professionals.
• Review and improve the work of colleagues, agencies, and partners without requiring formal supervisory authority.
• Lead high-impact programs and workstreams, establishing priorities, clarifying responsibilities, and driving execution across contributors.
• Represent the paid-social function in broader growth planning and cross-functional decision-making forums.
• Develop functional standards and capabilities while remaining accountable as a senior individual contributor rather than a formal people manager.
• Share expertise and reusable practices that strengthen paid-social capabilities across markets and teams.

In the role of Senior Manager, User Acquisition – Paid Social, you will report to the Senior Director, Growth Marketing.

We are considering applicants for the location of Los Angeles, CA.

About You

We get excited about candidates, like you, because...

• 8+ years of progressive experience in paid social, user acquisition, growth marketing, or performance marketing, including ownership of complex or multi-market programs.
• Demonstrated success developing and scaling paid-social acquisition strategies with measurable impact on subscriber, revenue, or customer-growth outcomes.
• Advanced hands-on expertise across Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and other major or emerging social advertising platforms.
• Experience managing significant media investments and making data-informed budget-allocation decisions across campaigns, platforms, or markets.
• Strong knowledge of performance measurement, attribution, incrementality, forecasting, experimentation, and customer-lifetime-value concepts.
• Experience solving complex, ambiguous business problems independently and converting analysis into actionable strategy.
• Experience influencing senior stakeholders and leading cross-functional initiatives without direct authority.
• Strong understanding of platform-specific creative strategy, audience behavior, and cultural differences across international markets.
• Experience in presenting complex performance information and recommendations clearly to stakeholders at all levels, including executives.
• Experience leading agency relationships and holding external partners accountable for performance and business outcomes.
• Experience applying sound judgment to significant media investments, including evaluating financial trade-offs and making recommendations using incomplete or conflicting data.
• Experience developing reusable frameworks, operating standards, or playbooks adopted across multiple campaigns, markets, or teams.
• Demonstrated ability to operate with substantial independence while recognizing decisions that require senior-leader review or escalation.
• Experience in subscription services, streaming, entertainment, anime, gaming, or fandom-driven brands is strongly preferred.

About the Team

You’ll join Crunchyroll’s Growth Marketing organization, a global, cross-functional team focused on growing and engaging our subscriber base. The User Acquisition team is combining performance marketing, creative, analytics, product, finance, and regional expertise to turn audience insights into scalable growth across markets.

Why you will love working at Crunchyroll

In addition to getting to work with fun, passionate and inspired colleagues, you will also enjoy the following benefits and perks:

• Receive a great compensation package including salary plus performance bonus earning potential, paid annually.
• Flexible time off policies allowing you to take the time you need to be your whole self.
• Generous medical, dental, vision, STD, LTD, and life insurance
• Health Saving Account HSA program
• Health care and dependent care FSA
• 401(k) plan, with employer match
• Employer paid commuter benefit
• Support program for new parents
• Pet insurance and some of our offices are pet friendly!

#LifeAtCrunchyroll #LI-Hybrid

The Pay Range for this position is listed. Actual pay will vary based on factors including, but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Crunchyroll’s Total Rewards offerings for employees. Other rewards may include performance bonuses, employer matched retirement savings, time-off programs, and progressive health benefits and perks.Pay Transparency - Los Angeles, CA$141,100—$165,000 USD

About our Values

We want to be everything for someone rather than something for everyone and we do this by living and modeling our values in all that we do. We value

• Courage. We believe that when we overcome fear, we enable our best selves.

• Curiosity. We are curious, which is the gateway to empathy, inclusion, and understanding.

• Kaizen. We have a growth mindset committed to constant forward progress.

• Service. We serve our community with humility, enabling joy and belonging for others.

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion

Our mission of helping people belong reflects our commitment to diversity & inclusion. It's just the way we do business.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at Crunchyroll. Pursuant to applicable law, we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Crunchyroll, LLC is an independently operated joint venture between US-based Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Japan's Aniplex, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc., both subsidiaries of Tokyo-based Sony Group Corporation.

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