Associate Director, Audience Development

About the Role

Our Audience Development team operationalizes Consumer Reports’ mission to create a safer, fairer, and more transparent marketplace, ensuring our trusted, independent guidance is highly visible wherever people make decisions—across traditional search, answer engines, newsletters, CR’s app, alerts, and social and emerging platforms. In a time of information overload, misinformation, and peak distrust, this is more important than ever. We’re looking for an experienced data detective, diplomat, and leader—the Associate Director, Audience Development will help drive audience strategy, activating and nurturing discoverability, engagement, and conversion across onsite and offsite channels, organic and paid, working collaboratively, cross-functionally, or independently, as needed. Reporting to CR’s Executive Managing Editor, you will act as the primary liaison for audience priorities and strategic alignment across CR divisions, spanning product management, marketing, and editorial, among others. This hybrid position with in-office collaboration (Yonkers and/or NYC) just once per month provides excellent flexibility. This position is not eligible for sponsorship or relocation assistance.

How You'll Make An Impact

As Associate Director, Audience Development you will create and continually optimize organizational standards that will help CR’s digital presence evolve in parallel with consumer needs and the technical marketplace, helping humans, agents, and everything in between find and rely on our insights at critical conversion and connection moments.

• Drive CR’s audience strategy, evolving the integration of our discoverability strategy across all channels and platforms and in collaboration with all relevant divisions,
• Oversee the Audience Development team, establishing technical, digital, and editorial best practices for excellence in both search results, answer engines, and nascent technologies
• Develop and maintain growth and optimization strategies across owned and distributed surfaces (web, app, Apple News, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Newsletters, etc.) in close collaboration with cross-functional teams, namely Marketing and Content
• Advise the Executive Managing Editor on defining and evolving audience KPI frameworks and roadmaps to measure short-term and long-term success
• Translate data into action: Help inform product roadmaps and editorial planning with specific and directional insights
• Establish cross-functional partnerships with Content, Product, Marketing, Analytics, Testing, Leadership, and other relevant teams to align on and elevate distribution, engagement, and optimization
• Advocate for brand visibility in AI ecosystems, ensuring attribution and authority signaling across generative engines
• Build, manage, and mentor an evolving audience team, comprising both full-time staff and project-based freelancers

About You

You’ll Be Highly Rated If:

• You have the experience: 10 years in audience strategy and insights, content strategy, growth strategy for a digital publisher, tech nonprofit, or mission-driven brand.
• You’ve managed teams in highly matrixed environments: 6+ years managing and mentoring teams, as well as cross-functional initiatives.
• You have experience in a non-profit environment.
• You are proficient with multiple search analytics tools and platforms.
• You have proven success leading or partnering on newsletter programs and platform packaging strategies.
• You have excellent communication skills, bridging editorial with digital, marketing and analytical teams around shared audience goals.
• You've led nascent AI optimization across digital and editorial teams in publishing environments.
• You have proven change management experience with cross-functional teams around audience development KPIs.

You'll Be One of Our Top Picks If:

• You have experience in a nonprofit environment.
• You have experience with a commerce or shopping site.