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Digital Recruitment

Adland hunts data-driven talent as programmatic comes to the fore

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By Ronan Shields, Digital Editor

January 27, 2016 | 7 min read

The IPA's annual survey reveals the growth in headcount of media agencies is far outstripping that of those in the creative sector, with the industry's largest holding groups now requiring new skill sets in the realms of data science, and those more traditionally associated with financial trading. Here The Drum charts how the industry is staffing up to be fit for the challenges of the data-driven era.

The IPA’s 2015 Agency Census, published today (28 January), reveals the marked growth of personnel within media agencies, with the number of people working in working in media agencies increasing 42.4 per cent over the past five years, as the industry’s major holding groups transition to a data-driven world.

Overall there has been a two per cent growth of the industry (from 23,231 to 23,662 in 2015) driven for the main part by media agencies, with the estimated number of first-year trainees and apprentices in member agencies increasing year-on-year from 986 to 1,210, and two-thirds of these (66.9 per cent) being found in media agencies, according to results.

Compared to 2005, the overall headcount among UK media agencies was 8,882 in 2015 – up from 4,327 10 years earlier. The trade body notes that this growth would appear to have taken place in all key departments, with the amount of employees involved in account planning and strategy increasing over the last five years from 124 to 591, while the numbers involved in media planning and buying grew from 2,480 to 3,691 during that time.

This period has also coincided with the emergence of programmatic media buying, as marketers and brands attempt to validate their practice with data recording consumer behaviour. Media agencies are responding in suit by recruiting additional talent from the academic fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Commenting on trends in the industry over the period, Nigel Gwilliam, who heads up digital practice at the IPA, told The Drum: "The last 10 years - and especially the last five - have seen a seismic upheaval in the media landscape and therefore the role, size and makeup of media agency personnel.

“Search engine marketing exploded in scale and significance, then with the successive wave of social media uptake, media agencies expanded their expertise to cover the inter-relationship of paid, owned and earned media.”

As a result, the proliferation of tech platforms paved the way for programmatic media buying, and the industry’s holding groups have responded by forming ad tech hubs such as WPP’s Xaxis, Publicis Groupe’s Vivaki and Havas’ Affiperf.

“All these facets are again revisited through the prism of a mobile-first internet, and all these have required additional skill sets in ever greater volume," added Gwilliam.

Mark Holden, head of strategy at Havas’ Arena Media, told The Drum the increase is in line with clients’ growing demand for more informed media planning and buying, and that the trend towards data-driven practice has required media agencies to reassess how they go about recruiting talent.

“Trading desks are part of a bigger development where the scope of what media agencies do for clients has increased in line with resource required to deliver in growing digital areas,” he said. “Part of this increase will be within centralised group teams but partly also in the 'core' agencies.”

He went on to cite the challenges of both recruiting and maintaining such clients, adding that agency personnel with qualifications in maths and data science are very much in demand.

“This inevitably creates challenges, but beyond pay we have to convince these candidates that the industry and culture of our companies are worth working in,” he said.

Ruth Zohrer, head of programmatic at GroupM’s Mindshare, added that programmatic media buying required candidates with a rare skill set.

“It demands people who are analytically and technically literate but [we] are also interested in people, how they behave, what moves them, etc.,” she said.

This is difficult to find in a “pre-packaged” way according to Zohrer. “Not every candidate is able to develop this holistic skill set, so recruitment processes that evaluate current skills plus learning potential from one direction to the other become incredibly important,” she added.

Rob Hunter, MD of Hunterlodge Advertising, an IPA member, said the last five years has seen a surge in demand for “digital natives”, as media agencies become increasingly desperate to become first-to-market with digital incentives.

“Recruiting graduates for ‘new’ industry-wide job roles is challenging irrespective of the industry in which you work. Until the education-based learning catches up with on-the-ground requirements, sourcing someone with the precise skill sets can be difficult.

To help its members do so, the IPA told The Drum it is working with a recruitment agency Step to recruit “hard to find” STEM talent, a process that has included visiting 12 universities based on their reputation for such studies.

“The IPA and Step go to sell ad land to students who may not have considered it otherwise,” according to the trade body,” said an IPA spokesperson. "Among the paid internship roles it is offering on behalf of its members are roles such as data analyst, real-time media planner/buyer (i.e. programmatic), or econometrician, as digital strategies come to the fore of media agencies’ practice.”

Among the universities the trade body is making overtures towards are Imperial College, University College London, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Manchester (plus other lauded institutions).

Mindshare’s Zohrer, told The Drum that such candidates also required an element of on-the-job training, as most of the educational systems favour one or the other (arts of science), whereas data-driven marketing demands the fusion of both.

Hunter commended organisations like the IPA, saying it is helping his agency to ascertain what skills you should be looking for in new recruits. "Then it is a case of fine-tuning your interview process to help you gauge when you’ve found the right person," she said.

Arena Media’s Holden echoed the point, adding that beyond "selling" the industry, he'd welcome initiatives from the IPA that build these skills within agencies: "We've always taught graduates about media and marketing but the underlying 'craft' skills required to navigate the modern media [such as data science] agency is now quite different."

Mindshare’s Zohrer concluded: “Essentially, you recruit one set of skills (analytical/technical or humanities/social sciences) with potential to develop for the other – those are the ‘unicorns’ we search for in terms of people.”

Learn more about the IPA's recruitment drive for data-driven talent here

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