Job Description

Location: London or Manchester
Salary: Dependent on experience and location (£32k-48k, plus commission)
Basis: Full-time (but also open to part-time arrangements)
Office/remote: Three days per week in our office, otherwise remote
Start date: October 2024
Application deadline: Sunday, 29th September

About Mill Media

Since being founded in June 2020, Mill Media has become a new force in British journalism, described as “One of the most interesting and impressive media startups of the last decade,” by the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch, and as “very, very impressive” by the Wall Street Journal’s Emma Tucker.

Last year, we raised money from a group of our readers, including the CNN chief executive and former New York Times and BBC boss Mark Thompson, who said he was investing because of the “exceptional quality” of our work. The FT and the Observer have recently covered our plans to expand to London and Glasgow.

Until now, most of our revenue has come from reader subscriptions, which will continue to be our core business model. But in the past year, we have been growing our ads business, focusing on high quality, high-impact sponsorships from organisations and brands that want to speak to our valuable audiences. This advertising appeals to clients who want to get key strategic messages across, appearing alongside our deeply trusted media brands.

Our clients include the Financial Times, the Royal Horticultural Society, the Lawn Tennis Association and the University of Manchester.

About the role

We are looking for our first ad sales hire – someone who has the contacts and the energy to sell big deals that will grow this crucial part of our business. The ideal hire will be someone who is very proactive about approaching leads, can work independently and will enjoy being part of a growing startup team that currently includes 12 staff but will reach 22 by the end of 2024.

They will also be someone who relishes the challenge of growing a new part of our business and taking on the varied tasks involved, including approaching and selling to clients, managing those relationships as they go on, drafting great ad copy for the sponsorship slots and helping to design and evolve our strategy. It isn’t a job for someone who wants to only handle one part of that process or who prefers to make a strategy for other people to execute.

Your main focus will be on the larger partners who want to advertise across all of our titles, but you will also be working with some local sponsors, too. You will be alert to who is advertising at any time and able to spot potential partners, finding ways to explain our company to them and showing the value of working with our quality titles. We need someone who can speak fluently and persuasively about the value of our journalism and what makes us unique.

About you

You will have experience selling advertising slots for media, and a good range of contacts among larger clients. We’re aware that many of the national organisations we’re looking to work with are based out of London, so contacts there will be particularly useful.
You will be able to cultivate a wide range of sponsors from different sectors.
You will be able to exercise good judgement, avoiding working with advertisers who might be seen to affect our editorial impartiality or clash with our brand.
You will be able to write engaging copy in the voice of our titles, in a way that doesn’t feel corporate or stale.
You will be self-motivated, proactively finding leads and converting them to clients, regularly reporting back and working to hit targets.

How to apply

Please email hiring@millmediaco.uk with your CV, a few paragraphs about your experience and why you’re well suited to this role and three examples of campaigns you have sold in the past. The deadline ismidnight on Sunday, 29th September.

Mill Media

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