Due to the omnipresence of smartphones and the web’s proven success as an advertising platform, there’s increased demand to place candidates with an intersection of IT and advertising skills in positions. The burgeoning ad tech industry is attracting more and more jobseekers, and this trend is expected to continue in the remainder of 2015 and 2016.

While ad tech was the province of specialized companies in the past, and still is to some extent, many companies in other fields are eager to place employees with competencies in areas such as programmatic advertising, and they’re finding that the right candidates just aren’t out there. 

In a column written for industry publication AdExchanger, Experian Marketing Solutions vice president of digital services Jay Stocki summarized the problem well:

"Every company with a link in the chain of ad tech is looking for talent, including agencies, publishers, data consultancies, technology companies and mobile startups. They are all focused on the same small pool of candidates, particularly in major markets like New York and Silicon Valley. The problem will get even worse as more brands start going direct with their programmatic efforts.

"We are all looking for that 'perfect' candidate: a data scientist with marketing experience who understands ad operations, data and analytics and can present a cohesive strategy to a Fortune 100 CMO. The problem is that we are all looking for the same rare bird that doesn’t yet exist in large numbers. How many data gurus do you know who excel at product marketing?"

Expect ad tech to be a massive area of growth for IT jobs. One company alone, New York’s AppNexus, hired 93 employees in Q1 2015 and increased their number of employees by nearly 20% . Those numbers aren’t an anomaly; even AOL saw their ad tech business grow by a staggering 54% between Q2 2013 & Q2 2014.