IAB Australia has released its inaugural Industry Talent Report with digital advertising and ad tech industry job vacancy rates have more than doubled in the last year to reach 9.8%.
The Industry Talent Report noted that this surge was driven by a combination of factors like strong market growth, changes in visa rules, a lack of new talent entering the market due to border restrictions and the entry of multi national companies into the Australian market.
This has created a critical squeeze on talent availability and an increase in the cost of talent.
IAB Australia unveils the Industry Talent Report
The Industry Talent Report also showed in its findings, that those organizations that have successfully hired employees in recent months faced an average 10% – 20% salary increase.
28% of organizations have increased offshoring of local work to help manage staff shortages.
However, an increase in talent poaching, decreasing productivity and slow growth are also resulting in organizations reporting that they are reviewing their investments in Australia.
IAB Australia’s executive commentary on the report
Gai Le Roy, the Chief Executive Officer at IAB Australia offered some insights into this scenario.
“This exponential demand for talent in the Australian digital advertising industry is the highest that I have seen in my twenty-plus years experienced while working in this industry.”
“Changes to visa rules have had a major impact on any overseas talent entering the market.”
“We are already seeing multi national organizations rethinking and considering a reduction in their investment plans for the Australian market due to talent shortages and costs.”
IAB Australia has created a Talent and Careers Working Group to expand its work in developing industry talent, with mentorship, education, community events and promotion of new jobs.
The Group will develop initiatives such as leveraging tertiary institutes to inspire a wide variety of people to join the digital advertising sector and develop new industry training programs.
They will introduce support programs for rising talent who are experiencing rapid promotions.
The Talent and Careers Working Group includes human resource executives, commercial leaders and senior executives from the digital advertising industry like Playground XYZ, Yahoo, Index Exchange, The Trade Desk, PubMatic, dentsu, InMobi, LinkedIn, and Quantcast.
Insights from IAB Australia’s Industry Talent Report
From a gender standpoint, the Industry Talent Report found out that whereas there is an even representation across the industry’s commercial roles (58% of industry headcount), almost three-quarters of commercial management and senior leadership roles are held by men.
Unfortunately, the Industry Talent Report findings show that 9 out of 10 of the technical and engineering roles are currently held by men, while 7 in 10 marketing roles are held by women.
According to the report, the most competitive sector of the market for recruitment was identified as people with three to five years of experience, resulting in many companies opting to recruit people with less experience so as to factor in the cost for training and upskilling.
Junior to mid-level accounting and sales managers, traders, plus performance and software program managers were identified by the report as the top three employment categories that advertising and adtech companies in Australia are finding the most difficult to fill.
Software engineers, product and tech support, plus tech developers are also challenging.
