Tuesdata: Is the digital advertising talent shortage easing?

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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.”

With shortages come salary increases 

Unsurprisingly, the shortage has led to significant salary increases within the sector. The average salary increase over the last 12 months was 7.6%, with considerable variation across roles and companies. Some businesses reported average salaries rising up to 20%. 

The shortage is affecting two Australian states in particular, NSW and Victoria, where 92% of the digital advertising and ad tech talent work. And it is far more relevant for NSW, where the majority of that 92% are based. 

Le Roy says having the industry so heavily based in NSW isn’t ideal but it hasn’t yet posed significant issues.

“It hasn’t come through as a major recruitment challenge, but it would be good to see commercial roles distributed in a way that is closer to the distribution of agency people and clients.

“A lot of small to mid-sized adtech companies like to have their team together particularly as staff are being encouraged to spend at least a couple of days in the office per week.”

A crunch that’s good for diversity? 

The IAB’s report also illustrated how the pandemic shifted gender diversity within the industry. While the report only breaks down gender into male or female, all sectors within the industry have shown increases in female representation aside from Marketing and Product. 

“There has certainly been an improvement in gender distribution for a range of roles over the last year with more female representation in tech support and senior management as well as more males in marketing roles,” Le Roy tells Unmade. 

“Overall, the talent crunch has been good for diversity. Although there has been loads of poaching in the industry, there has also been a lot more ‘creative’ recruiting and looking in different places for talent.”

Research & Analytics has by far the highest female representation, at 64%, while Tech & Engineering is the straggler, with only 13% female representation. 

Importantly, the size of each sector varies significantly. Fifty one percent of all roles within the digital advertising and ad tech industry are classified as Commercial, where there is a 52/48 split in favour of female representation. 

The report also found that most organisations now have formal policies for a wide range of issues. It also noted that there was actually a dip in policies in areas including mental health and LGBTQ equality due to small businesses entering the industry, although the amount of companies with sexual harassment policies has increased. 

There was a significant uptick in the number of companies either introducing or planning to introduce sustainability policies and initiatives in 2022. 

Big wins, small drops

In yesterday’s Start the Week podcast, my colleague Tim Burrowes delivered a detailed update on how the reporting season had been going, particularly for those included in the Unmade Index.

He mentioned that Nine’s results was one of the best he had ever reported on in our industry. Despite this, Nine’s week hasn’t started as well as it would have hoped, with a drop of 2.33%.

It wasn’t the heaviest faller, however, with Ooh Media and Seven West Media both recording falls around the 4% mark.

Time to take off

On a slightly random note, if anyone at the TV networks is reading, how about a sitcom for Alan Joyce? The Qantas CEO has been getting more than his fair share of the headlines lately. 

For those playing at home, of which I know there are a lot of people in the industry, Qantas’ share price literally took off last week and is still sitting above $5 currently. 

Turns out you can announce substantial losses and record low customer satisfaction yet still increase your value. 

Time to let you get on with Tuesday and pass you on to my colleague Tim Burrowes for the next post on Unmade. 

Stay safe,

Damian

damian@unmade.media