Tuesdata: Is the digital advertising talent shortage easing?
Tuesdata: Is the digital advertising talent shortage easing?
Welcome to Tuesdata, our weekly look into the most interesting data from the media and marketing industry.
This post is for Unmade’s paying members. If you want to get the full story and gain access to our Tuesdata archive, not to mention all the other benefits paying membership provides, click the button below.
This year and the majority of last has been dominated by a few pandemic related challenges in the media and marketing industry. One of those is a significant talent shortage.
Last week the IAB released The Industry Talent Report featuring a number of data points around the talent shortage in the digital advertising and ad tech space. It gave Unmade a look at the full report and we can share with you some of the stats here.
The information in the report was gathered from 45 ad tech and media owners in the Australian market and relates to people in commercial roles, client support, ad operations, trade marketing, insights, research, analytics, data, ad product, programmatic, engineering, technical development and support roles.
The sample looks at people employed in a role directly linked to digital advertising.
This is just a snippet of what is included in the full report, which you can access here if you’re an IAB member.
Let’s start with the actual vacancy statistics.
The talent shortage is real and ongoing
No surprises that the report found the shortage still exists. But it broke down the contributing factors to suggest that strong market growth, changes in visa rules, lack of new talent entering the market and the arrival of new large local and global players all contributed to the general talent availability squeeze.
Vacancy rates increased substantially since the beginning of the pandemic. It started at a relatively low 4.6% in September 2020, just after the harshest of Covid-19 induced standowns, redundancies and revenue-saving measures had been felt. However, it now sits at 11.8% after taking a significant leap to 9.8% in 2021.
For context, IAB CEO Gai Le Roy tells Unmade that an average of around 4-6% would be more normal.
“This research has only been carried out for three years, so we must make some assumptions as all three years have been somewhat unusual,” she says. “A vacancy rate somewhere between 4-6% would be the sort of level that would be standard on the media owner and ad tech side of the industry.”
Businesses are finding it hardest to attract talent with 3-5 years of experience. There is a staggering 44% vacancy rate currently, up 2% from last year. But it was the 5+ year category that increased its vacancy rate the most, up 7% from 2021 to now sit at 30%.
Some talent groups are becoming more plentiful
There is a silver lining, however. Finding entry level talent as well as talent with 1-3 years experience has become easier, with both of those vacancy rates dropping 4% from their 2021 levels.
It is also worth noting that there have been significant layoffs in the tech space. As the report states, “Although global tech layoffs have not had a major impact on the local ad tech industry at this point, the increase in companies with no vacancies suggests that the vacancy rate may have peaked.”