Advertising Agency Recruiters for Creative, Media and In-House Teams
We fill the seats an agency actually runs on, and we know what the studios and streamers are paying to take those same people.
An advertising agency recruiter fills the seats an agency runs on, including account leadership, strategy, copy, art and production, for creative and media agencies and for the brands and studios now hiring the same people. KORE1 recruits on both sides of that line.
Last updated: October 8, 2026
Here’s the thing nobody on page one of this search will tell you. The agency is not the highest bidder anymore. Not on most of these seats.
Advertising and public relations firms still employ the craft. About 89,970 people work in the five department lines below from inside those firms, and for market research and planning the industry is the single largest employer in the country. What’s changed is who pays the top of the band. That part is new. Broadcasting, streaming and the studios have been building the same functions in house, and on four of those five lines they now post a higher median than the agencies do.
- This desk
- Account and client leadership, brand and communications strategy, copy and art, creative operations, production and studio management, at creative, media, integrated and in-house agencies.
- Routed elsewhere
- Media planners and buyers go to media buyer staffing. Sponsorship and integration deals go to brand partnerships recruiters, and activation producers to experiential marketing recruiters.
Agency hiring runs through the KORE1 marketing recruiters, with copywriter staffing and digital and creative staffing alongside. Samantha Litman runs the senior searches. She has spent most of 25-plus years recruiting inside advertising, media and entertainment businesses, which is long enough to have watched this particular line move. The buying side of the business has a page of its own, on recruiting for media agencies.
What Advertising Agency Recruiters Price Against Now
Five department lines, read down. Three industries that post the same work, read across. The pencil mark sits against the one that pays the highest median, the way an annual marks the winner.
Annual median wage by industry, May 2025
- Account and client leadershipAdvertising and promotions managers
- Agencies$133,550
- Broadcast and streaming$162,340
- Studios$167,230pays the highest median on this line
- Brand and marketing leadershipMarketing managers
- Agencies$168,420
- Broadcast and streaming$207,400
- Studios$208,270pays the highest median on this line
- Strategy and planningMarket research analysts and marketing specialists
- Agencies$76,660
- Broadcast and streaming$92,370pays the highest median on this line
- Studios$83,010
- CopyWriters and authors
- Agencies$79,440pays the highest median on this line
- Broadcast and streaming$77,530
- Studios$78,320
- DesignGraphic designers
- Agencies$61,200
- Broadcast and streaming$76,360
- Studios$82,430pays the highest median on this line
One pencil on the agency side, and it’s for copy. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. Agencies is NAICS 541800, advertising, public relations and related services.
A $38,980 gap on a marketing leadership seat is not a counter-offer problem. It’s a different employer category reaching the same shortlist, and it is why an agency req that looked routine in 2022 goes quiet in week five. Your candidate didn’t lose interest. Somebody moved first. Somebody else moved first, and had more room.
None of which means the agency loses. It means the agency has to be honest about what it’s selling, and most of the good ones already know what that is. Range of work. Range of work. Four accounts instead of one brand, a portfolio that keeps moving, and a promotion path that doesn’t wait for one person above you to leave. We’ve seen senior people turn down more money for exactly that, more than once. But you have to say it out loud, in the posting, because the money is going to say the other thing first. So say it.
Copy is the exception worth noticing. Agencies still post the highest median for writers, by about a thousand dollars, which sounds like nothing until you remember it’s the only line where the industry is still the top of the market. That’s not an accident. Variety is the pay. The agency is where a writer gets to write for eleven different problems in a year.
What an Advertising Agency Recruiter Asks That a Portfolio Won’t Answer
A reel proves the work shipped. Barely. It doesn’t say who carried it, how many other jobs were open that month, or whether the client was easy. Agency work is credited generously and remembered precisely, so our screening goes at the parts that never make the case study.
- How many accounts were you on at once, and which one did you drop when it got busy?
- Tell me about a piece in your book that you’d now call somebody else’s idea.
- What did you present that the client killed, and what did you do the following week?
- Who on your last team could you not have shipped without?
The first question is the one that sorts agency people from in-house people, and it’s the reason a brilliant brand-side hire sometimes stalls in an agency seat. It isn’t craft. Not usually. It’s load. Three accounts, six live jobs and a pitch on Friday is a specific tolerance, and the honest answer to that question tells you whether somebody has it.
Samantha starts somewhere plainer than any of this. What is their current situation? In advertising that question earns its keep, because a strong candidate who’s two weeks from a campaign launch isn’t moving in two weeks, no matter how good your offer is. Ask early. You’ll know whether you’re hiring this month or next quarter.
$38,980
what broadcasting and streaming pays a marketing manager above the agency median
89,970
people in those five department lines employed inside advertising and PR firms
4 of 5
lines where another industry now posts the higher median
92%
KORE1 twelve-month retention, from its own placement records
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release, annual medians and industry employment. KORE1 placement records.
Why Advertising Agency Searches Take Longer Than They Used To
Samantha has a short version of this, from her own searches. In the past there was always a divide between the agency world and everybody else. Now the lines have blurred. All of them.
Entertainment and media companies went after business that agencies held by default for years, and they did it without standing up whole new departments. They folded the work into teams they already had. Quietly, mostly. The federal table shows the result from the pay side, and a recruiter sees it from the other end, as a candidate pool that answers the phone and then mentions they’re already talking to a streamer.
Her read on supply is worth repeating, because it isn’t the one the trend posts run with. We can always find great candidates. Whether they’re ready to move when the market feels unsteady is the harder question. The constraint isn’t scarcity. It’s timing. It’s willingness, and willingness is a timing problem you can actually manage.
Which is why an agency search that has already failed internally behaves differently. A fresh opening with responsive hiring managers can close in two to three weeks. Sometimes faster. A seat that’s been open a while, or filled once and lost, usually runs one to two months, and about half that difference is the time it takes to unwind a requirement list that got too specific while the role sat there. If yours has stopped producing candidates, that’s usually the first thing to look at.
On pricing a seat, use your own market before you use a national median. Your market, not the country. Our marketing and creative pay guide covers the neighbouring roles, you can check a band for your metro before the posting goes up, and plenty of these searches land in Los Angeles or New York, where the agencies and the studios are hiring from one pool and everybody knows it.
The Seats Our Advertising Agency Recruiters Fill
Four departments, the way a credit block divides them. Small shops fold two of these into one person constantly, and that’s fine, as long as the posting says so. Just say so.
Account
Client leadership
Account directors, group account directors and client partners who own the relationship and the revenue on it.
Strategy
Planning and brand strategy
Brand, comms and digital strategists who turn a client problem into a brief somebody can actually make.
Creative
Copy, art and creative direction
Writers, art directors, designers and the creative directors who decide which idea leaves the building.
Production
Production and creative operations
Producers, project managers and studio leads who get the work made on the budget that was agreed.
Most of these are direct hire, because an agency seat gets good in year two, once somebody knows the clients. Continuity pays. A new account with a hard start date is different. A contract producer or strategist can carry the first wave while you decide what the permanent shape is, and Samantha is seeing more clients ask for contract-to-hire as budgets tighten, so they aren’t carrying a full-time salary for a team they’re still sizing. Whichever route, we measure ourselves the same way, and KORE1’s retention at twelve months sits at 92%.
Several of these titles have their own page, because they get searched on their own. The agency account director, the brand strategist, the art director, the creative director, the creative project manager and the executive producer all sit next door. Studio-side technology roles are a different desk again, over at media and entertainment IT staffing.
And if the shortlist keeps coming back thin, the fix is often a background you ruled out on the first pass. Go back and look. Worth reading what we’ve learned about hiring marketing and creative people from other industries, and about what your job title is telling candidates before they ever reply.
Common Questions
What does an advertising agency recruiter actually do?
An advertising agency recruiter fills agency-side seats across account leadership, strategy, copy, art, design and production. KORE1 runs those searches for creative, media, integrated and in-house agencies, and for the brands and studios hiring the same people.
Do advertising agencies pay less than brands and studios?
$208,270 was the May 2025 median for marketing managers in motion picture and video, against $168,420 in advertising and PR firms, a gap of $38,980. Across five department lines the agency industry posts the top median on only one of them, copy. Agencies compete on range of work rather than on base pay, and the posting has to say so. Most don’t.
How long does it take to fill an agency role?
Two to three weeks for a fresh opening with hiring managers who answer quickly. In Samantha Litman’s recent work, a seat that has already been open a while, or filled once and lost, tends to run one to two months instead. Campaign timing stretches both numbers, because strong candidates rarely move the fortnight before a launch. So start earlier.
Do you recruit for in-house brand studios as well as agencies?
Yes, and for more of them every year. The same titles now sit inside brands, broadcasters and studios, so a search that only looked at agency resumes would miss most of the market. We work the pool rather than the employer category. It is one pool.
Can somebody from a brand in-house team succeed at an agency?
More often than agencies expect, and the thing that breaks it is rarely craft. It’s load. One brand and a predictable calendar is a different job from three accounts, six live briefs and a pitch on Friday, so screen for how many things somebody has genuinely run at once rather than for whether the logos look agency.
Why has our agency search stalled?
Usually one of three things. Sometimes all three. The requirement list grew while the role sat open, the band was set against a national median rather than the industries actually bidding, or the process has more stages than the candidate’s patience. Samantha’s first question to a client is whether the requirements have got too specific, and the answer is often yes.
Tell Us Which Line You’re Hiring On
Give us the department, the accounts it carries and the date it has to start. We’ll tell you where those people are right now, and what you’re bidding against for them.
Let’s Talk →Rather start on LinkedIn? Send Samantha Litman a note
