What are job seekers looking for after the GFC?

Ever since people started trading, countries have been specializing in different industries, when economies turned more global, companies specialized in different processes, and now that the world is globalized, each person specializes in something different. One thing that we must note though, is that specialization has only been done to optimize processes that are in demand.

During hard economic times such as the ones lived at the peak of the GFC, and even now that the effects are lingering into our present, the trend is that advertising companies are looking for experts in the field that their client’s marketing strategies are demanding: on-line marketing.

Doing some research on seek.com.au, I found that today, there are 2,174 job opportunities available in marketing related positions, and from these 2,174, more than 870 are on-line marketing opportunities. That means that overall; more than 40% of the total demand for marketing related jobs in the Australian market is for on-line marketing experts of some kind.

To explain this phenomenon, we could argue that during the GFC, companies all around the world are following the same trend, moving from T.V. and print-media advertising to on-line and gaming advertising, which happen to be the fastest growing industries at the moment with more than 10% annual growth every year for the gaming industry, which is extremely high for a 68 billion dollar industry that has had similar growing rates during the past decade and even more astonishing, the 20% growth rates experienced by the online advertising industry, which is estimated to reach $147 billion US by 2012.

One empirical proof of the transition from TV to online and gaming advertising is the study made by the television expert group, which shows that revenues coming from television advertising dropped 9.2% globally during 2009 (International Television Expert Group). This was probably caused by the high prices charged by this type of media compared to the available advertising opportunities in the on-line and gaming industries, which in terms of coverage and popularity are gaining every day more share of the market, and also because prices are lower and the potential consumer reach is higher.

Also, new technologies have become available during the past years, for example, it is every day more common that people read the news and watch on-line TV, making regular TV and print media advertising more obsolete.

It is clear that during the upcoming years, marketing will shift towards cheaper and more original sources of advertising, it happened with the invention of the TV that replaced radio advertising to some extent, and it is happening with the internet that is rapidly gaining terrain in the advertising industry due to its mass covering potential and posibilities for cheaper prices.