Director, Product Management (Media)

Be essential at Cars Commerce At Cars Commerce, we’re fanatical about simplifying everything about car buying and selling. We do right by our customers and consumers to better connect the industry with simplified and tierless technology to enhance, measure and drive local automotive retail. Whether through our No.1 most recognized marketplace, Cars.com, our industry-leading digital experience, Dealer Inspire, our trade and appraisal technology, AccuTrade, our reputation-based digital wholesale auction marketplace, Dealerclub, or our new Cars Commerce Media Network, Cars Commerce is essential for success in the automotive industry. No one ever travels alone here: at its core, Cars Commerce is collaboration. In fact, it’s built into the very fabric of our shared values. We like to say we Rise Together – putting people at the center of what we do, from consumer to customer to community. Life at Cars Commerce makes it easy when we share the ethos to be Open to All, encouraging open-minded communication because we know diverse thinking yields better outcomes. But critical to our success is Caring to Challenge and Taking Ownership, fueling a competitive spirit in a respectful environment where we think about tomorrow but act today. At our foundation, we have integrity, Doing the Right Thing, even when it’s hard. It’s our shared commitment to these values that makes Cars Commerce a place where growth becomes not only possible, but downright unavoidable. But don't take our word for it. We are proud to be named one of Built In's 2026 Best Places to Work in Chicago and across the U.S. Ready to make your mark? Join a team that's driving real change in the automotive industry. Product Leader of Media Initiatives for Cars.com

Cars Commerce

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Job Description

Director of Product Management, Cars.com Media Turn here. About Us Cars.com (NYSE: CARS) is an audience-driven technology company empowering the automotive industry. We enable confident car buying and selling decisions for consumers via powerful products, solutions, machine learning, and model-driven artificial intelligence technologies that span pre-tail, retail, and post-sale activities. Our mission is to build the most trusted and intelligent marketplace for buying and selling cars, while accelerating efficient and profitable retail operations for dealer customers. The Cars Commerce platform is organized around key assets:

• Cars.com (Marketplace): The number one automotive marketplace brand with more than 30% traffic growth over the past five years
• Dealer Inspire (Websites & Digital Experience): Digital marketing technology & services that are endorsed by nearly every OEM Cars.com also has additional products that further enrich the Dealer experience and strengthen their experience on the marketplace
• AccuTrade (Trade & Appraisal): Powering profitability with the right price on any vehicle, every time
• Cars.com Media Network: Pure in-market audience across social, video, search, display, and custom content
• DealerClub: Reputation based Dealer to Dealer wholesale auction platform which provides a valuable additional inventory control to Dealers, enabling them to increase their efficiency, keeping only the vehicles on their lot that they want to focus on with their retail consumers. Scope As a Director of Product at CARS, you will deliver growth by solving consumer and customer challenges unique to the automotive retail industry. As a product org leader, you will oversee the full lifecycle of product development for a suite of strategically important products. You will deliver industry leading innovation and value delivery through your team of product managers. You will define the strategy and lead innovation for your product suite; hire, develop, and coach your team of PMs; and define effective strategies for product development. You will work with cross-functional leadership (UX design, engineering, research, marketing, and analysts) to deliver a best-in-class product roadmap (including well defined, validated, and prioritized epics/initiatives). You will define product goals that deliver business growth and consumer/customer impact, and ensure that those goals are met. As a Director of Product, you are a creative problem solver, people leader, and executor driven by positive outcomes for our users. You demonstrate trust in and dedication to our vision, mission and values. You have strong customer empathy and make product decisions based on both qualitative and quantitative customer, industry knowledge, and business data. You make decisions by optimizing for ROI and driving bottom-line/top-line performance. You have a passion for solving complex, multi-sided marketplace problems, developing strategies and roadmaps, and executing plans that create new value for our users and our business. You are a natural collaborator and communicator who has a track record of building positive relationships across a broad, diverse organization. You can establish, communicate, and gain buy-in for a vision that extends across our full ecosystem of products. As Director of Product for Media, you will own the company's advertising business end to end: the on-site advertising experience served directly to visitors on our marketplace platform, and an audience-based media network that packages our first-party audience data and activates it across external channels such as programmatic buying platforms, social, connected TV and streaming video, online video, display, and audio, all in service of both OEM and dealer customers. You will also play a critical role in defining the media and data technology stack that underpins how media is operated across both Cars.com and Dealer Inspire, with a unique focus on building the media operating system layer of Dealer Inspire Media Services, a dealer-specific media agency model. Essential Functions
• Define and deliver the roadmap for the Cars.com and Dealer Inspire media platforms.
• Own the product strategy and roadmap for on-site advertising across the Cars.com marketplace platform, including ad placement design, new ad formats, and the underlying ad-serving technology, balancing revenue growth with a strong visitor experience, for both OEM and dealer customers.
• Partner with the Commerce Media delivery team on the strategy and expansion of the audience-based Cars.com Media Network, that packages the company's first-party audience data and activates it across external advertising channels, including programmatic buying platforms, social platforms, connected TV and streaming video, online video, display, and audio (among other channels).
• Define and drive the media technology and data roadmap that supports how media is planned, bought, delivered, and automated at scale across the organization's two primary media activation departments, Cars.com Media Network and Dealer Inspire Media Services, ensuring the underlying tools and data infrastructure are efficient, scalable, and built in close coordination with each other rather than in isolation.
• Closely collaborate with internal Data Strategy teams and the Commerce Media delivery team on the measurement and attribution strategy for media products, ensuring reporting connects advertising investment to real, demonstrable business outcomes for customers, i.e. cross-platform identity resolution, closed-loop measurement, 3P automotive sales data sources, etc.
• Make clear build, buy, or partner recommendations for media and advertising technology capabilities, staying current on the broader advertising and media technology landscape.
• Ensure media products and data practices comply with evolving privacy regulations and industry standards.
• Demonstrate an ownership mindset, working with teams across the organization to deliver the solutions our customers need, as well as the outcomes enabling customer success.
• Understand dealers’ needs in detail and ensure the problems are clearly defined and prioritized
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