While discussions around the labor market may seem all doom and gloom given recent layoffs, experts said it’s more of a mixed bag, and those looking to hire or be hired shouldn’t fret just yet.

“You read in the media and sort of expect that hiring is ground to a complete halt—our data is showing that that is not the case,” Carin Van Vuuren, CMO at recruiting software provider Greenhouse, told us.

According to Van Vuuren, while the companies it works with had slowed hiring globally by 30%–40% in November compared to March, Greenhouse data indicates that there isn’t a shortage of emerging opportunities in marketing based on the number of offers being rejected. In fact, in October last year, employment at US ad agencies hit an all-time high, according to Ad Age.

For those searching for their next role, we spoke with agencies about what they’re looking for as they think through their 2023 hiring strategies.

Seeing the bigger picture

Maggie Malek, CMO of advertising agency MMI, told us that the agency is looking for people who can provide clients not just with creative help but also business consulting.

“Every time we’ve kind of gone into these [economic] dips, what brands are really looking for is integrated strategy,” she said, adding that “they don’t want just a TikTok idea or a Super Bowl idea. They’re really looking for agencies to be their partners in helping drive business results when sales [are] down.”

Monica Chun, chief client officer and president of Acceleration Brand Advisory at holding company Acceleration Community of Companies (ACC), which owns agencies like MKG and Pixly, told us that “one of the most valuable skills and types of people we’re looking for is someone who can creatively and effectively storytell in a 15-second video or a simple visual.” Beyond that, she said, ACC is also looking for “cultural specialists” who understand what consumers are interested in today.

Continue reading here.—KH

From the debut of ad-supported tiers on Netflix and Disney+ to Thursday Night Football’s migration to Prime Video, 2022 was a transformative year for the streaming industry.

But we still have plenty of questions. Which streaming services will keep thriving? How will their ad businesses fare? And which companies stand to get gobbled up as the business continues to consolidate?

We asked three researchers and analysts who keep a close eye on the media industry to help us make sense of the past year and what to expect in the coming 12 months. Some answers have been edited for clarity.

What is the biggest challenge facing streaming platforms in 2023?

Mike Proulx, VP, research director, Forrester: It’s likely that content quality will suffer in 2023. Streaming services have been paying exorbitant production and licensing fees, and it’s simply not a sustainable path to long-term profitability. As a result, we’ll see a mixed bag of content—likely more cheap and churnable content at the expense of quality original series and movies. This is a problem since what keeps users subscribed to their favorite streaming service is great content. Streaming services must find the right economic calculus that enables them to maintain quality while profitability growing.

Geetha Ranganathan, senior media analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence: Platforms have introduced ads, but given the overall macro weakness, it will be interesting to see if they can get the traction that they had hoped for. Cost rationalization and reinvigorating subscriber growth will continue to be the biggest challenges [while also] preserving legacy TV’s economics.

Keep reading here.—KS

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• What experiential marketers are anticipating in 2023
• Vox Media “formalizes” ban on fossil-fuel ads
• A Super Bowl 2023 refresher

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Lessons learned: An article by Hien Mai of the LinkedIn product marketing team with tips about how to best use the platform.

Ethics class: Seven steps corporations can take to become more ethical…while also turning a profit.

Cut it out: Here are some ways that marketers can reduce busywork.

• Roku announced a line of smart TVs that will be “designed and built” by the company itself.
• Amazon’s layoffs, which began in November, will impact more than 18,000 employees, the highest number publicly disclosed by a tech company in the past year, per the WSJ.
• Coinbase reached a $100 million settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services over what regulators described as “significant failures in its compliance program.”
• Andrew Morse, a former CNN exec who led CNN+, has been named publisher of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
• Truly Hard Seltzer chose Ogilvy as its creative agency of record.
• GM reclaimed the title of America’s top automaker from Toyota.

Snap poll: Are you looking for a career change this year?

🟢 Yes
No
🟡 Unsure

“Do Americans really expect 2023 to be a better year?” Ipsos set out to answer that question by surveying nearly 25,000 adults across 36 countries, and though a majority (64%) of Americans are hopeful that this year will be better than last, there’s also plenty of pessimism to go around.

Tough times: Most people in the US (51%) and, on average, 56% of respondents said 2022 was “a bad year for themselves and their family.”

• On the whole, Americans “found 2022 to be just as bad as 2021,” according to Ipsos, despite the sizable share who said they expect they’ll have a better year in 2023.

Economic woes: It seems people around the world are not exactly optimistic about the global economy in 2023.

• On average across countries, less than half (46%) of respondents said they think the global economy will be stronger this year, compared to 61% who said the same of 2022.
• In the US, that share dropped from 54% to 42%.
• Perhaps that’s because “large majorities” of respondents said they expect that the cost of living, prices, inflation rates, unemployment, and interest rates will all rise, and about half of global and US respondents each  said that “it is likely major stock markets around the world will crash.”