Is Marketing Eating the World? Or Eating Itself?

Everyone is Busy Marketing

What used to be a small department of designers, writers, and people making fancy PPTs is now at the very heart of customer relationships, brand engagement, and business success. If you've been keeping up with our newsletter , you'll have seen how nearly every business is turning into a marketing business. Google is an easy example.

Once simply "big tech," dreaming of flying car moonshots – Google is pure advertising and marketing at its core.

Amazon? Its ad revenue consistently brings in better margins than the online shopping side. And retailers like Walmart and Target? They treat consumer data like liquid gold, turning it into a marketing powerhouse that brings in extra revenue and keeps customers loyal. Even apps like Uber and PayPal are building marketing systems within their ecosystems.

Follow the Money

Since the pandemic, companies have been throwing more and more money at marketing, with budgets hitting an average of 9.5% of total revenue in 2022 - up from 6.4% in 2021. GroupM reckons ad spending will top a trillion in 2025, growing 6.8% - a year earlier than they had predicted back in December 2023.

CMO Demand

And on the job front, CMOs are popping up everywhere, almost as ubiquitous as CFOs.

In 2024 so far, we have tracked 248 big global CMO moves.

From tech startups and art museums to universities and retirement homes, businesses across industries are all busy appointing CMOs. Yet, when times get tough, marketing budgets are the first to get slashed, and senior marketers are often shown the door. We’ve all seen it. Many brilliant marketers are stuck in limbo, job hunting for months with nothing to show for it. One of our SVP level connections shared:

“It's like there’s been a pandemic of marketing job losses”

So what’s going on? Is AI taking over marketing roles? Or has the job market genuinely shrunk? We were curious.

Better, Faster, Data

Unfortunately, the job market data we’ve got to work with is often outdated, based on slow-moving surveys that can't keep up with how fast digital marketing is changing. That's why, with the help of our friends at Aspen Technology Labs, we’ve got access to real-time data from over 135,000 US employer websites—covering about 70% of all job openings nationwide. While it’s not everything, it’s still an impressive data set in an otherwise slow and murky market.

We only gather data from employer websites, as major job boards like Linkedin and Indeed carry many duplicate postings.

No Agencies

We’re focused on capturing "in-house" marketing jobs—those on the client or brand side—leaving agency positions out for now. Agency roles tend to require a different skill set, heavy on managing clients and relationships, so we decided to start small and humble, but we might include them in future reports.

Our Findings

Our analysis of the quarterly job numbers brought up some interesting insights:

• Marketing jobs have held steady, growing 7.7% yearly, even in sectors facing a bumpy ride.
• Blue states hire more marketers than the red and swing states combined and offer a median salary 74.5% higher than the Red or Swing states.
• Salary transparency is gaining ground, with about a third of postings showing salary bands, even in states where it’s not required.
• Remote marketing roles have stabilized at 14% of total job listings, despite all the push to return to the office. (Our bet is that remote will increase to 20%+ in marketing, despite some CEO playing prioritizing proximity)
• There’s been a 14% rise in dual-function marketing roles over the past year—companies are asking marketers to wear more hats.
• Product Marketing is booming, with a 26% year-over-year growth in vacancies. Content and Brand Marketing are also seeing healthy growth at 11.9% and 11.1%, respectively, while Communications and PR are lagging behind with a 4.5% drop in job openings.
• Despite all the talk of AI taking over, Entry-level and mid-level positions, especially in digital marketing, continue to see robust demand, proving that automation hasn't closed the door on career paths in marketing.
• But at the top, SVP and EVP marketing roles are down 17.8% yearly. It appears that companies’ focus on efficiency and quality profit generation had a more profound impact on their hiring strategies than the common fear of AI taking over jobs.

As Max Cheprasov, former Chief Automation Officer at Dentsu, put it:

"Marketing careers aren’t vanishing; they’re evolving. Those who blend AI with creativity will lead the charge"

What’s your take?

Let us know what you make of our Fall Marketing Jobs Report.

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