Remote Media Jobs: 1,843 Postings, 320 Fully Remote

Last reviewed: October 2026

You've run a seven-figure paid social budget from a laptop for three years. You pace it in Meta Ads Manager, rebuild audiences in the DSP, and send the client a deck nobody reads past slide four. Then your agency's postings start ending with the same sentence, and you search "remote media jobs." LinkedIn's remote media page promised more than 10,000 open roles when we checked. The first nine included a staff accountant and a page designer at a newspaper group. Only two of the nine had "media" in the job title at all.

Then you read the postings that are actually media jobs. Tinuiti's buying and retail media postings say "We support 100% remote work for this role!" OMD's planning postings end with "Omnicom’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager."

Similar work, different owner. In media, the job title tells you surprisingly little about remote work. Who owns the employer, and whether the work lives inside a platform login, tells you most of it, and the posting shows both before you apply.

We analyzed 1,843 US media job postings across 1,172 employers, listed between May and October 2026. This guide covers how many are really remote, which media jobs go remote and which don't, what they pay, and a four-check test you can run on any posting in a minute.

Here are the figures behind that answer, all from the same postings.

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How We Collected This Data

We read 1,971 unique US requisitions with "media" in the job title as the job itself, deduplicated from 2,518 copies. They came from LinkedIn's public job search (60 keyword queries, 5,512 unique cards, 1,576 full job descriptions read), the SimplyHired and Indeed network (46 searches, 394 job pages), 781 company career sites on Workday, 1,162 live Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and SmartRecruiters boards, and amazon.jobs. 128 appeared only on Himalayas, a board that lists nothing but remote jobs, so we left them out of every share. That leaves the 1,843 postings at 1,172 employers used throughout this guide, listed May 1 to October 30, 2026.

In: buying, planning, paid and programmatic media; media relations and press; media production, multimedia and broadcast; media and advertising sales; media analytics and measurement. Out: titles whose only media word is "social media" (we cover those in our remote social media jobs guide), "media" as an industry label (a cloud vendor's Media and Entertainment practice), school library and lab "media," AI-rating gigs, talent-pool postings, internships, and listings dated before May. 52 postings sit outside the five lanes below: 33 software and product roles on media teams and 19 titles too generic to place. They count in the totals.

Work model comes from the posting text and structured fields. A search for "remote media buyer" finds remote postings by design, so we report remote shares two ways: all finds (320 of 1,029) and plain-search finds (217 of 915). We hand-read all 105 remote labels that lacked a clear sentence about the seat, plus random samples of 40 remote and 30 unclear rows. That caught Walmart's "Home Office" (its headquarters, not your house), outside-sales seats called remote that are tied to one metro, and "partial telecommuting," which is hybrid.

Pay: 1,088 postings with a posted range, read at the midpoint, with 57 hourly ranges annualized. What we can't see: Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter and mediabistro block our fetcher. Data reflects October 2026, and we refresh it quarterly.

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"Media Jobs" Is Five Different Jobs

Job boards treat "media" as one category. It's five jobs that share a word, and they go remote at very different rates.

Among plain-search finds the gap is wider: buying 26.2%, measurement 23.3%, media relations 17.1%, sales 15.1%, production 12.8%.

The reasons are physical. Buying and planning happen in Google Ads, Meta, Amazon DSP, The Trade Desk and a pacing spreadsheet, and none of those care where you sit. Production needs cameras, sets and control rooms. Local station sales means meeting business owners in one market, in person. Valpak's media sales posting reads "(Remote Outside Sales Opportunity in the Greensboro, NC (The Triad) Area)," which means remote from an office, not remote from Greensboro. Media relations splits: in-house communications at distributed companies can go remote, agency PR mostly can't, for reasons the next sections explain.

A media job goes remote when the work lives inside a login. Gear, a local market or a holding company's office rule pulls it back into a room.

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The Login Test: Four Checks That Predict a Remote Media Seat

The Login Test is a four-check score you run on the posting itself. Each check is one point. It tells you how likely a media seat is to be remote, and it works across buying, PR, production and sales.

1. Independent employer. The seat isn't at a WPP Media, Omnicom, Publicis, IPG, Dentsu or Havas agency (OMD, Starcom, Razorfish, Mediahub, Carat and the rest). The network name usually appears in the first or last paragraph.
2. Performance math. The posting names ROAS, CPA, CAC, LTV, CPL, conversion rate or incrementality.
3. No gear. No camera, filming, shoots, footage, on-set, in-studio, on-air, live events, control room or "lift up to 50 pounds" line.
4. No local market. No local clients or businesses, territory, driver's license, reliable vehicle, in-person client meetings, DMA or "our station" line.

Each check moves the odds on its own. The first moves them most; the fourth is the weakest alone but separates postings within the middle scores.

Here's the test on two real postings. Tinuiti's Manager, Media Investment posting (USA, remote, $85,000 to $100,000) asks you to "Review campaign performance data (spend, delivery, reach, CAC/ROAS, quality metrics such as viewability/IVT) regularly." Independent agency, performance math, no gear, no market: 4 of 4, and the posting says "We support 100% remote work for this role!" Omnicom Media's Group Supervisor, Media posting (New York, $105,000 to $130,000) names no performance metric and carries the Omnicom office line: 2 of 4, an office seat. The Omnicom seat pays more at the midpoint. It also comes with a commute three days a week.

The bands hold when we slice the data. Among plain-search finds, office, mixed and login seats are remote 11.8%, 22.6% and 40.4% of the time. Without Tinuiti, the largest single remote poster, it's 17.8%, 30.3% and 43.1%. At employers that aren't agencies at all it's 24.3%, 26.8% and 42.3%; at manager level and above, 13.2%, 30.4% and 40.5%; among postings with a $75,000-plus midpoint, 22.5%, 33.7% and 42.7%. One caveat: we picked the checks on this same set of postings, so treat the bands as a read of this market rather than a law.

If you've been applying to every posting with "media" and "remote" in it, the test is the filter you were missing. Run it first, then put your time into the 4s.

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Holding Companies vs Independents: The Owner Decides

We found 157 postings at 44 agency names owned by the six holding companies. 81 of them state a work model. One is remote. 78 are hybrid. Among plain-search finds it's 0 of 80.

The office rule isn't hidden. 110 of the 157 postings print it, usually after the equal-opportunity paragraph:

• Omnicom, in 64 postings across 17 agency names, from OMD and Hearts & Science to Critical Mass, BBDO and Weber Shandwick: "Omnicom’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager." Mediahub, Carmichael Lynch and Weber Shandwick were IPG agencies until the Omnicom merger, and their postings now carry the same sentence.
• WPP Media and Burson, in 13 postings: "That's why we've adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week."
• dentsu, in 6: staff near its Chicago, metro Detroit, Los Angeles and New York hubs "are required and expected to work from the office three days per week (two days per week for employees based in Los Angeles)."
• Publicis, in 23 Starcom, Razorfish and other postings, offers a "'Work Your World' Program encouraging employees to work from anywhere Publicis Groupe has an office for up to 6 weeks a year." That's a travel perk. It isn't remote work.
• Monks, in 5: "If you reside within a commutable distance of one of our office locations, you will be expected to work from the office a set number of days per week."

Why does ownership matter more than the work? A holding company sells clients a room: planners, buyers, analysts and strategists working one account side by side, inside offices it already pays for. The office is part of what it sells, so the policy goes into every posting. An independent performance agency sells results measured in ROAS and CPA from platform logins, and nothing about that deliverable needs a room. Tinuiti alone posted 21 remote seats in our window. Take Tinuiti out and independents are still remote 113 of 300 times (37.7%), and 85 of the 213 independents that state a work model posted at least one remote seat. Finn Partners writes: "We're a remote-first workplace with optional in-office days in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, Portland, Washington DC, and more."

Pay doesn't follow the office. Holding-company and independent agency postings sit about $5,000 apart at the median ($95,000 and $90,000).

If you work in agency PR, our remote public relations jobs guide covers how each network's return-to-office policy reached the PR shops.

In media, the agency's owner predicts remote work better than the job title: 1 of 81 holding-company postings was remote, against 134 of 323 at independent agencies.

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Remote vs Hybrid vs On-Site: What the Postings Say

Hybrid is the most common arrangement in media, not remote. Of the 1,029 postings that state a model, 491 are hybrid, 320 remote, 155 on-site and 33 tied to a named office. When a hybrid posting names its office days, it's three a week 118 times, four 30 times and two 22 times.

814 of the 1,843 postings say nothing about where the work happens. Most are LinkedIn listings with a city in the location line and no sentence about the seat. Where you find a posting changes what you see: career sites run 70 of 247 remote (28.3%), LinkedIn 148 of 598 (24.7%), and SimplyHired's remote-location searches 102 of 184.

Two titles stand out for the wrong reason. Associate media director postings were remote 4 of 28 times and supervisor postings 4 of 25. Those rungs mostly exist on agency ladders, and most agency ladders belong to a holding company. Manager-titled buying postings, the title brands and independents use, were remote 61 of 176 times.

If you're coming from station sales, the remote sales seats sit elsewhere: agency and brand-side media sales postings were remote 9 of 25 times, and brand media networks such as Kohl's Media Network hire account executives as remote.

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What Remote Media Jobs Pay

The posted median across all 1,088 ranges is $96,700 (p25 $75,000, p75 $137,600). The buying ladder shows where the money and the remote seats line up.

These ranges come from our analysis of 1,088 postings with a posted range between May and October 2026, read at the midpoint and annualized where hourly. They reflect what employers publish under state pay-transparency laws, not offers. For a federal cross-check, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts advertising and promotions managers at a $133,660 median (May 2025) and marketing managers at $166,790. BLS has no media buyer or planner occupation; the closest, market research analysts and marketing specialists on O*NET, sits at $78,760.

By lane, measurement pays most ($133,500, n=49), then media relations ($109,600, n=107), buying ($95,700, n=673), production ($80,500, n=161) and sales ($77,500, n=63). By employer, ad platforms post the highest ranges ($162,500, n=53). Media relations tracks the BLS figure for public relations specialists, $74,750, at the junior end ($72,500, n=13) and runs well above it at manager level ($100,000, n=26).

Remote seats aren't priced down. Across everything, remote postings sit at $98,400 (n=202), hybrid at $98,600 (n=343) and on-site at $72,700 (n=95), but the on-site figure is low because station production and local sales live there. Compare like with like: at manager level and above, remote is $122,500 (n=99), hybrid $126,250 (n=196) and on-site $130,000 (n=39). Higher-paying postings are more often remote, too: 168 of 507 postings with a $75,000-plus midpoint (33.1%) against 34 of 173 below it (19.7%).

Remote media seats don't pay less than hybrid ones. At manager level and up, the medians are $122,500 and $126,250.

If you're weighing a director-level move, the roles paying $150K or more and our remote marketing director guide show where media director pay sits against the rest of marketing.

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Where the Remote Media Seats Are

Performance and retail media are where remote and six figures meet. Postings with paid, performance, paid search or paid social in the title were remote 90 of 232 times (38.8%) at a $100,000 median. Retail and commerce media titles, the people buying Amazon DSP, Walmart Connect, Instacart and Target's Roundel for brands, were remote 27 of 62 times (43.5%) at $105,000. It's the newest corner of media buying, and most of it runs through retail ad platforms rather than rooms.

Employers that posted several remote media seats in our window include Tinuiti (21), Blacksmith Agency (7), Wpromote (6), Finn Partners (4), Harvest Group (3) and DEPT (3) among agencies, and Gray Digital Media, the digital agency arm of the Gray station group, which posted remote paid media and programmatic seats alongside the group's market-based station jobs. Hearst posted features multimedia journalist seats as remote. These are soft confirmations, not open-role counts; check recent openings on our marketing and growth job board.

The other lanes have smaller pockets:

The pattern repeats across all four. The remote exceptions are the seats where the deliverable is a file, a dashboard or a placement, not a shoot, a meeting or a room.

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How to Move From an Office Seat to a Login Seat

Translate the agency ladder. Brands and independents rarely post "supervisor" or "associate media director." A holding-company supervisor maps to a senior manager or manager seat ($102,500 median, 61 of 176 remote); an associate media director maps to senior manager or director. Search the remote marketing manager listings as well as media titles, because in-house paid media often sits under that name.

Write the performance math down. It's the one Login Test check you control. "Managed $3.2M across Meta and YouTube at a 4.1 ROAS" reads as a login seat to a performance agency. "Managed integrated plans for a CPG portfolio" reads as an office seat, even if you ran the same platforms.

Pick the lane before the company. Retail media and paid search at an independent or a brand are the strongest remote lanes we measured. Buying postings without performance math were remote less often (26.3% across all lanes), and the holding companies sit at 1 in 81.

Read the last paragraph first. The holding company's office line sits after the equal-opportunity text. A few seconds of scrolling can save you a whole application. Our remote digital marketing jobs guide covers how paid media fits into broader marketing careers if you're weighing a move in-house.

The remote seats are spread across hundreds of employers: 235 of the 700 employers that stated a work model posted at least one remote media seat. Reading every posting for an office line is slow work, and it's exactly the part a tool can do for you.

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Our Read: Remote Media Work Is Performance Work

Here's our read, from the counts above. The remote media job is a performance job at an independent shop, a brand or a platform. Postings that name ROAS, CPA or CAC were remote 122 of 276 times; holding-company postings were remote 1 of 81 times, and seven in ten holding-company postings carry a written office rule (110 of 157).

If your work is brand planning inside a holding company, the seat isn't coming home, and waiting for the next policy memo is a bad plan. The policy is printed in the posting. It's part of the product.

What you can do is move the work you already know. Budgets, pacing, optimization and reporting are the same skills at Tinuiti, at a brand's in-house team or at a retail media network. The difference is that those employers sell a result, not a room. Write the result on your resume and apply where the result is the product.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Find Your Remote Media Seat

Score every posting with The Login Test before you apply. Search the manager and paid media titles, not just "media." Read the last paragraph for the network's office rule before you read the first.

Then cover the volume. Even login seats go remote a little under half the time. Auto-Apply sends tailored applications to qualifying media postings while you keep running your current book. Browse remote jobs paying $100K and up, check the marketing and growth board for recent openings, and read our remote communications jobs guide if media relations is your lane.

The ad platforms don't care where the buyer sits. The holding companies do, and they print it at the bottom of the posting.