IAB Australia today released its inaugural Industry Talent Report which found that digital advertising and ad tech industry job vacancy rates have more than doubled in the last twelve months to reach 9.8%. The report notes that this surge was driven by a combination of strong market growth, changes in visa rules, lack of new talent entering the market due to border restrictions and the entry of new large global organisations into the Australian market, creating a critical squeeze on talent availability and an increase in the cost of talent.
The Industry Talent Report also found those organisations that have successfully hired staff in recent months faced an average 10 – 20% salary increase; and that 28% of organisations have increased offshoring of local work to help manage staff shortages. An increase in poaching, decreasing productivity and slowing growth is also resulting in organisations reporting that they are reviewing their investment in Australia.
Gai Le Roy, IAB Australia CEO commented “The demand for talent in the Australia digital advertising market is the highest that I have seen in my 20 plus years in the industry. Although we are seeing higher job vacancy rates globally in our industry, the problem and ongoing risk for the Australian market has been heightened with longer border restrictions as well as changes to visa rules that have had a major impact on any overseas talent entering the market. We are already seeing global organisations looking at decreasing their investment in the Australian market due to talent shortages and costs.”
IAB Australia has now established a Talent and Careers Working Group to expand on the work it already undertakes developing industry talent, including a mentorship program, education, community events and promotion of job openings. The Group will focus on developing people related initiatives including working with tertiary institutes to encourage a broader range of people into the growing digital advertising sector, developing a range of new industry training programs; and introducing support programs for rising talent in the industry who are experiencing rapid promotion.
The Talent and Careers Working Group is made up of HR executives, commercial leaders, and senior executives from the advertising industry organisations including Playground XYZ, Yahoo, Index Exchange, The Trade Desk, PubMatic, dentsu, InMobi, LinkedIn and Quantcast.
Additional insights from Industry Talent Report
From a gender standpoint, the Industry Talent Report found that while there is even representation across commercial roles (58% of industry headcount), almost three quarters of commercial management senior leadership roles are held by men. Nine in ten technical and engineering roles are held by men, while seven in ten marketing roles are held by women.
The most competitive sector of the market for recruitment was identified as people with three – five years’ experience, resulting in many organisations opting to recruit people with less experience and to factor in the cost for internal training and upskilling.
Junior to mid-level account and sales managers; traders; and performance and programmatic managers were identified as the top three categories of job roles that advertising and ad tech companies in Australia are finding the most difficult to fill. Software engineers, product and tech support and tech developers was also proving challenging.
/ Ends
About the Interactive Advertising Bureau
As an independent industry association with more than 150 members in Australia and nearly 9,000 globally spanning media owners, publishers, technology companies, agencies, and advertisers, IAB works to align industry stakeholders to develop solutions for the issues faced by the market and develop standards that are integral to the operation of digital advertising.
IAB Australia also works closely with other industry associations including MFA and AANA to help shape the rules of play around measurement, Australian Digital Ad Practices, mentorship, global tech and policy work, Tech Lab standards, standardising terminology and supporting the broad media and marketing community.