IAB Australia has 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 per cent.
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 per cent salary increase; and that 28 per cent 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, said: “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.
The Industry Talent Report also found that from a gender standpoint, while there is even representation across commercial roles (58 per cent 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.
