---
title: "Media Director"
description: "Leads advertising media strategy for brands, deciding where and how budgets are spent across TV, digital, social, audio and outdoor channels."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/media-director"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Media Director

**Category:** Management · **SOC code:** 11-2011 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 11-2011.00

Leads advertising media strategy for brands, deciding where and how budgets are spent across TV, digital, social, audio and outdoor channels.

Also advertised as: Director of Media; Media Planning Director; Group Media Director; Head of Media; Associate Media Director.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $133,660 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $64.26/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $63,300 to $286,240, with the middle half between $91,370 and $201,050
- **Total US employment:** 21,470
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -3.7% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 2,300 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 39/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 21,470 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $63,300 |
| 25th | $91,370 |
| 50th (median) | $133,660 |
| 75th | $201,050 |
| 90th | $286,240 |
| Mean (average) | $154,280 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NY | $173,700 | $160,951 | 3,550 |
| IL | $167,330 | $167,400 | 160 |
| CA | $167,230 | $151,039 | 3,080 |
| NJ | $165,390 | $152,006 | 470 |
| CO | $164,990 | $160,104 | 180 |
| WA | $163,380 | $152,673 | 530 |
| MA | $163,090 | $154,212 | 300 |
| RI | $157,890 | $154,370 | 60 |
| SC | $156,300 | $166,722 | Not published by BLS |
| OR | $154,490 | $149,466 | 430 |
| KS | $148,560 | $164,942 | 40 |
| VA | $148,400 | $146,780 | 180 |
| DC | $143,040 | $130,154 | 80 |
| GA | $133,810 | $138,961 | 420 |
| MT | $131,770 | $139,226 | Not published by BLS |

23 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 38 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/media-director/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/media-director.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 33,200 in the 2025–2035 base year to 31,900 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 1,200 jobs, or -3.7%. Declining: -3.7% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 2,300 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

## What the work involves

- Develop media strategies and channel plans for clients
- Allocate budgets across TV, digital, social and other channels
- Lead teams of media planners and buyers
- Negotiate large deals with networks and platforms
- Present media plans and results to clients
- Analyze campaign performance and shift spending
- Evaluate new advertising formats and measurement tools

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Sales and Marketing — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Communications and Media — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Originality — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Conventional (C), Artistic (A).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 7.00 |
| C — Conventional | 5.02 |
| A — Artistic | 4.45 |
| S — Social | 3.14 |
| I — Investigative | 1.69 |
| R — Realistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFJ | 72.1 |
| ESFJ | 67.7 |
| ENTJ | 67.1 |
| ESTJ | 61.4 |
| ESFP | 60.5 |

Best-fitting types: ENFJ, ESFJ, ENTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Advertising and Promotions Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/advertising-and-promotions-manager) — median $133,660
- [Advertising Sales Agent](https://nuecareer.com/careers/advertising-sales-agent) — median $64,820
- [Marketing Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/marketing-manager) — median $166,790
- [Market Research Analyst and Marketing Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/market-research-analyst-and-marketing-specialist) — median $78,760
- [Search Marketing Strategist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/search-marketing-strategist) — median $78,760
- [Public Relations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/public-relations-specialist) — median $74,750
- [Public Relations Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/public-relations-manager) — median $146,910
- [Sales Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-manager) — median $148,270
- [Fundraising Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fundraising-manager) — median $125,470
- [Fundraiser](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fundraiser) — median $72,550

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/media-director