Job description
, South Africa's leading e-commerce platform and a proud member of the Prosus ecosystem, is seeking a driven and commercially minded **Advertising Account Manager, Mandarin & English (Cross-Border)**to join our Takealot Group Advertising team in Cape Town. In this role you will be the primary partner for our fast-growing community of international Marketplace sellers, equipping them with the knowledge, strategy, and hands-on support needed to unlock the full potential of Takealot's self-service Sponsored Advertising platform. **Sitting at the exciting intersection of retail media, e-commerce, and cross-cultural commerce, you will bridge the gap between our Cape Town-based advertising team and Mandarin-speaking sellers — driving advertising revenue, accelerating seller growth, and shaping the future of retail media on Africa's largest online shopping destination.** **Proficiency in both Mandarin and English is essential to succeed in this role.**
****Advertising Account Manager, Mandarin & English (Cross-Border)****– International Sellers is a specialist commercial role within the Takealot Group Advertising team. **You will manage a portfolio of Mandarin-speaking Marketplace sellers, driving adoption and performance on Takealot's Sponsored Advertising platform while consistently achieving retail media revenue targets**. You will combine strong consultative sales skills with deep platform expertise and a data-first mindset to deliver measurable results for sellers and for Takealot.
This position reports to the **Portfolio Account Lead.**
**Your responsibilities will include:**
- Retail Media Sales & Revenue Growth: Consistently meet and exceed advertising sales targets; proactively identify and convert upsell opportunities across international seller accounts.
- Seller Onboarding & Platform Enablement: Drive adoption of Takealot's self-service Sponsored Advertising platform by Mandarin-speaking Marketplace sellers; deliver platform training and skills transfer in Mandarin, ensuring sellers can independently operate and optimise campaigns.
- Strategic Account Management: Serve as the primary point of contact for a portfolio of international sellers; build trusted, long-term partnerships that deepen seller engagement and increase advertising investment over time.
- Media Planning & Consultative Selling: Develop tailored media plans and advertising strategies for top-tier sellers, aligned to their business objectives, seasonal peaks, and product launch calendars; present compelling, data-backed recommendations.
- Campaign Performance Management: Monitor live campaign performance against agreed KPIs (e.g. ROAS, CTR, conversion rate, spend pacing); generate regular performance reports (weekly/monthly/quarterly) and deliver actionable optimisation insights to sellers.
- Campaign Execution & Coordination: Coordinate the collection of creative assets; manage the integration of booked campaigns into the marketing calendar; liaise with retail marketing managers to ensure on-time, on-brief delivery.
- Billing & Financial Operations: Ensure managed services campaigns are invoiced accurately and on time each month; oversee reconciliation and invoice adjustment processes.
- Seller Acquisition: Develop and implement acquisition strategies to grow the base of international sellers investing in advertising on the platform.
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with creative, analytics, campaign management, and CRM teams to ensure seamless execution and alignment with client objectives; support Marketplace Account Managers to drive advertising uptake across their key accounts.
- Seller Education & Content Development: Contribute to the development and hosting of educational webinars and training sessions in Mandarin; collaborate with the CRM team to produce seller-facing case studies and adoption/retention enablement materials.
- Platform Issue Resolution: Act as the first point of escalation for seller platform queries; escalate operational and technical issues to the relevant engineering and product teams and manage resolution timelines.
- Market & Platform Intelligence: Stay current with global retail media trends, platform updates, and competitive marketplace advertising developments; share insights internally to inform product and commercial strategy.
**Attributes required**:
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, strong attention to detail and follow-through
- Ability to persuade sellers to adopt new technology
- Excellent content design; and presentation skills
- Strong analytical and critical thinking, using data to inform decisions
- Ability to work independently to achieve sales targets
- Solutions-oriented, can-do attitude, self-motivated
- Entrepreneurial mindset
- Understanding of the digital advertising and e-commerce environments
**Qualification & Experience:**
- **Mandarin proficiency (spoken and written) — essential for seller communication, platform training, and skills transfer with international sellers.**
- **English proficiency (spoken and written) — essential for internal communication with line management and all South African-based stakeholders.**
- Bachelor's Degree or Advanced Diploma in Marketing, Business, Commerce, or a related field. In the absence of a formal qualification, a minimum of 5 years of demonstrated account management experience will be considered.
- **Minimum 3 years' experience in advertising sales and/or account management, with a proven track record of achieving or exceeding revenue targets.**
- **Solid experience in digital marketing and advertising (search, display, sponsored ads, or programmatic)**.
- Demonstrated ability to use data and campaign metrics to drive commercial recommendations and client decision-making.
- Strong consultative sales skills with a track record of managing and growing a portfolio of accounts.
- Excellent relationship management skills — ability to build trust and rapport across cultural and language boundaries.
**Advantageous**
- Experience working in or with e-commerce marketplaces (e.g. Takealot, Amazon or similar).
- Familiarity with retail media platforms and self-service advertising tools
- Experience with campaign analytics platforms.
- Understanding of cross-border e-commerce dynamics, particularly between China and emerging markets.\
- CRM platform experience and comfort working with performance dashboards and reporting tools.
**The Environment:**
- employees are entrepreneurial and dynamic, smart, customer-centric, fun and have the shared ambition of being the leading e-commerce company in Africa.
- We have fun, work hard, take ownership, work in teams to create solutions, and are always open to direct feedback/new ideas on where we can improve
- We are short on ego and high on output
- We are doers and not only thinkers, it’s all in the execution after all
- We love what we do and what we are creating
If you meet the above you are an **Extraordinary Mind** so come and join us!
***Takealot Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applicants from the previously disadvantaged groups and people with disabilities, to apply*****.**
