Freelance Data Analyst + Content Writer (Programmatic/Adtech)

Job Description

Picnic is building the surface layer for media quality and curation in programmatic advertising. Our platform, PIQ (Picnic Inventory Quality), helps agencies, brands and platform partners understand and optimise the quality of the websites and inventory where ads run. We work with programmatic buyers to turn quality signals into practical decisions that improve outcomes across campaigns and supply.

We’re looking for a freelancer who can combine deep, credible analysis of programmatic campaign and inventory data with the ability to turn that analysis into excellent marketing materials.

This role is a blend of:

• Data analysis (campaign performance + inventory quality insights)
• Insight generation (what’s happening, why it matters, what to do next)
• Content creation (blog posts, case studies and occasional whitepapers)
• Light visualisation (simple charts and tables to support the story)

Projects will be set and scoped individually. Typical scope might be 1 blog post plus supporting analysis and charts, or a case study/whitepaper-style output.

Requirements

What you’ll do

Analyse campaign + PIQ data

• Deep dive into campaign performance data and PIQ quality datasets to uncover patterns and clear “so what” insights
• Identify drivers of performance and quality across:
• domains/subdomains
• inventory cohorts
• formats (e.g., video, display, instream/outstream where relevant)
• placements/environments (where available)
• Make findings defensible and easy to validate (sensible cohorting, comparisons, and checks)

Turn insights into publish-ready content

• Write content such as:
• Blogs (data-led insights, trends, explainers)
• Case studies (results, before/after, methodology)
• Whitepapers / reports (deeper thematic analysis)
• Translate technical findings into plain English for a programmatic audience
• Work with us to ensure the narrative aligns with Picnic positioning and is appropriate for publication

Produce light charts + supporting assets

• Create clear, clean charts/tables (Excel is fine; Python also welcome)
• Provide the accompanying analysis output alongside the content (e.g., summary tables, charts, and short interpretation notes)

Example project topics

• The relationship between inventory quality and key outcomes (e.g., viewability, VCR, CTR, CPM efficiency)
• Domain/subdomain-level insights: what separates high-performing inventory from the long tail
• “Before vs after” quality filtering: performance changes when excluding low-quality inventory
• What agencies/brands miss when relying only on standard verification metrics
• Format-specific insights (e.g., instream video performance drivers)

What we’re looking for

Must-have

• Strong experience in and understanding of programmatic advertising (agency, DSP/SSP, adtech, analytics)
• Ability to work directly with real-world campaign datasets and messy exports
• Excellent writing skills for agencies, brands and platform partners
• Comfort producing charts and supporting tables (light but polished)
• Good judgement: you can separate a real signal from noise and avoid over-claiming

Nice-to-have

• SQL competency (you can query and transform datasets independently)
• Python for analysis and charting
• Familiarity with APIs and/or BigQuery
• Prior experience writing in the style of programmatic industry blogs (clear, data-led, commercially useful)

Tooling & data access

You’ll work with data provided via:

• CSV exports
• SQL access
• Picnic’s API
• (Nice-to-have) BigQuery

Typical working tools:

• Excel required
• SQL/Python preferred

How we work

• We’ll scope each project clearly (objective, datasets, intended audience and content type)
• You’ll run analysis, propose angles and draft the piece
• We’ll review and iterate quickly to finalise a publish-ready output
• Final content will be used across:
• Website/blog
• Sales enablement
• PR
• LinkedIn

Engagement structure

• Project-based engagement
• Rough cadence: 1 project every 2 months
• We'll start with a test project, then continue on an ongoing basis if it’s working well

When Applying:

Please share:

• 2-4 relevant writing samples (programmatic/adtech preferred)
• Brief summary of your programmatic background (roles, platforms, analysis experience)
• A short note on your preferred working style for data-to-content projects

Optional (but helpful):

• A lightweight example of an analysis you’ve turned into a narrative (even a short outline)

*If you have any additional material to support your application that can't be included here, please feel free to email [email protected]

Benefits

This is a freelance, project-based contract role, not a permanent (PAYE) position. You’ll work remotely from anywhere, with flexible working hours and we’ll agree clear scope, timelines, and deliverables for each project. The engagement is designed for an independent freelancer who can take ownership of analysis-to-content work and deliver high-quality outputs on a defined project cadence (roughly one project every two months).