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?”

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