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After initial public offerings and breakneck hiring in 2021 and early 2022, job openings for ad-tech roles have dramatically slowed in the past year, according to recruiters and industry sources.
New jobs are down by approximately 60% since June 2022, when hiring first began to slow, said Josh Marmer, managing director of digital recruiting at recruiting firm AC Lion. Avi Mally, CEO of recruiting firm Three Pillars, where ad tech is a focus, said job openings between January and May were down around 50% since the third quarter of 2022, though noted hiring has begun to start again in the past month.
Rob Beeler, CEO of Beeler.Tech, which operates a job list focused on publisher ad operations and ad-tech roles, said openings were down 30% in the second half of 2022 compared to the first half of 2022, a trend that has continued into 2023.
A senior ad-tech executive who was laid off in February told Adweek their job search is still ongoing. The timeline for middle management to find a new job has grown from four months to around 12 months, said Shiv Gupta, CEO of digital marketing education firm U of Digital, who regularly helps refer job seekers.
“It’s been a drought,” Gupta said. “I know smart senior folks that cannot get jobs still. They have worked at the best companies and they are scraping and clawing for every opportunity.”
The lack of job opportunities coincides with a wave of layoffs throughout the industry at the end of 2022 and the beginning of this year. Companies like Yahoo, Integral Ad Science and Innovid all laid off around 10% or more of their staff. MediaMath filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month, sending some 300 employees into the job market. Following the February bankruptcy of Big Village, owner of supply-side platform EMX, which had over 300 employees. Media and news companies cut over 17, 000 workers as of May, the highest year-to-date on record, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.
What roles are (and are not) open
Sales is one of the more reliable sources of jobs, with Marmer saying it’s the number one area of recruitment for the firm right now.
“The salespeople have direct ROI,” Gupta said, in comparison to some engineering and product roles. “In a tough time, do you want to be building stuff that may or may not pay off three years from now?”
Senior roles tend to be less plentiful than more junior ones, and when they do exist, they can incorporate several roles.
You’re paying gold prices for copper. You knew it was going to break and it broke.
Josh Marmer, managing director, AC Lion
The senior ad-tech executive, who requested anonymity to discuss the job process freely, said he noticed three instances where the hiring managers revealed—often well into the interview process—that the open role was really two roles combined. In one case, a single role existed for both a head of new business and a head of existing growth.
“When they eventually admit it, they’re meek about it,” the source said, noting these roles don’t come at double the pay. “We’ve all seen this movie before. Three to six months [that new hire] either quits or the company is doing well enough to” hire another person for the second role.
While these combined positions are frustrating, they might turn into two openings when the market picks up. The more dire situation is the roles that are gone for good as the industry pursues automation. Beeler said that already publishers are pruning some roles in data entry that involve the manual management of direct campaigns.
Déjà vu or something new?
Sources said that, so far, this downturn seems milder than previous ones, like the 2008 recession or the rapid layoffs at the start of the pandemic in 2020.
“2008 was a little more sudden. There was a big shock to the economy,” Mally said, noting that this time around, the impetus for layoffs has been slower-moving forces like inflation, interest rates and the decisions of the biggest tech companies. “It’s caused a lot of companies to slow roll their decision-making processes. I don’t think this is as bad.”
But Marmer noted that in 2008, ad tech was still a young industry, poised for growth. Advertisers were only projected to start spending more on online ads than newspaper ads in 2010, per a New York Times report at the time. This time, the layoffs feel more localized to the tech sector.
It’s not clear yet whether this downturn is more emblematic of macroeconomic conditions or industry-specific challenges. Either way, companies are overcorrecting for their massive hiring sprees in 2021.
“I knew it wasn’t good when it was happening,” Marmer said. “It’s not good to overpay. You’re paying gold prices for copper. You knew it was going to break and it broke.”
