Behind all the headlines last year of falling ad spend and plummeting profits, the human cost of lockdown mounted as companies across the industry cut jobs and furloughed large numbers of workers.
The road to economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has been rocky, and there’s still uncertainty around how quickly life will return to normal.
But there are strong signs that hiring in the media and advertising sector will see a swift recovery this year.
Melina Jacovou, founder and CEO of digital recruitment agency Propel London, says she’s already seen a massive difference in January compared to the early months of the pandemic.
“In March, when everything kicked off, everything went on hold,” she said. “The only jobs that held up were engineer jobs, because people are always desperate for engineers, and they’re difficult to find. But around 80 percent of hiring dropped off a cliff.”
“Then in around September, we started to see people hiring again, and now it’s off to the races,” said Jacovou. “Clients are hiring cross board; tech, commercial, marketing, business operations, lots of senior staff.”
Gali Darchi, founder of ad tech and ad ops recruitment specialist Darchi Digital, said she’s also seen a marked change during the beginning of this year.
“Last year was very difficult, everything went flat around March. And even after I personally went back to the office in June, and towards the end of the year, everything was pretty slow,” she said.
“But this month I’ve actually got more jobs than I can handle,” said Darchi. “And jobs range from ad tech to publishers to data consultancies.”
Recovery, Funding, and Innovation Driving Hires
These signs suggest that even though much of Europe has reentered lockdown, businesses are much more confident now in taking on new hirings than they were in previous lockdowns.
Those VideoWeek spoke with pointed to a number of factors driving the job market rebound.
Firstly, and most obviously, the recovery in ad spend we’ve seen since the first wave of the pandemic has allowed companies to pick up hiring again.
Ari Lewine, co-founder and chief strategy officer at ad tech company TripleLift, told VideoWeek that his company actually resumed hiring last June, after seeing a prompt recovery in programmatic ad spend. Lewine said TripleLift plans on making around 100 new hires this year as the company continues its expansion into Europe and Asia.
But new jobs are also being created as industry changes and innovations create entirely new positions.
Specifically, companies working in the identity space are growing their workforces as they seek to develop and sell solutions for the post-cookie world. And more broadly, many media and advertising businesses are hiring identity and data specialists to develop internal strategies for the privacy-first era. Gali Darchi said roles relating to data across the board have picked up, since data is one area where there’s still plenty of room for growth.
“Digital video and OTT advertising has matured a bit now, so a lot of the roles I’m recruiting for in those companies are replacements of existing jobs, rather than new roles being brought in,” said Darchi. “But where there’s innovation and room for growth, such as data and identity, that’s where a lot of new roles are coming from.”
Propel’s Jacovou added that an influx of funding for media and tech companies in Europe is allowing tech companies to take on new workers very quickly.
“VC, M&A and private equity deals have all picked up, the amount of money around in the UK and Europe is off the scale,” said Jacovou. “And we’re also seeing North American businesses starting to land deals again, and coming over to Europe. They’re saying ‘we’ve got the funding, we’ve got the tech, now we need the people, please find them!’”.
Increased M&A in the agency world may also spur hiring sprees this year. Holding group WPP for example has had a period of consolidation for the past few years, selling off a number of businesses and merging others. But CEO Mark Read has said the company is now looking at potential acquisition targets, which could lead to new hires. And WPP has committed to reinvesting some of the cost savings made during its period of consolidation back into new hires.
Talent Needed to Plug Gaps
Both Jacovou and Darchi said that the main issue now is finding enough talent to fill available roles.
“It’s tricky to find talent,” said Jacovou. “There’s lots of talent in the UK, but it’s still tricky to find it. It’s difficult to acquire it, and it’s even more difficult to retain it.”
Darchi agreed, saying that the number of job applications coming through at the moment seems to be lower than usual – with workers perhaps nervous of leaving safe jobs during the pandemic
And Darchi added a note of caution. While hiring has picked up so far this year, there is still a risk it could slow down again if economic conditions worsen.
“As an example, we had a briefing with the head of programmatic for a publisher recently,” she said. “And they couldn’t commit to how many people they’d want to hire this year, because there’s still a lot of uncertainty. Lots of people are still being very cautious.”
But for those who’ve found themselves looking for work in media and advertising, the signs certainly seem to be positive that job seeking in 2021 will be much easier than last year.
“The future is bright,” said Jacovou. “We are going into a massive boom in the tech sector right now, so strap in!”
