The Talent Scout Hiring Index: Marketing Hiring Trends

November 2026 edition. Data: January 1 to October 28, 2026. Published November 2026.

The Talent Scout Hiring Index tracks marketing hiring trends from the demand side: which senior marketing, creative and operations roles US agencies and brands ask Talent Scout to hire in Latin America. In 2026 so far, paid media and performance, design and creative, and project and account management are our top requested role families, together close to three in five requests. Since July, demand has moved toward paid media and social roles, and toward more senior titles.

It is built from one source only: the role searches companies open with us. It is not a survey and not job-board data.

Methodology at a glance. Every role search a US company opened with Talent Scout between January 1 and October 28, 2026, whatever the outcome. Each search counted once, including searches for several identical seats. Role titles grouped into ten families. We report shares, never counts. Direction compares January to June with July to October 28, on two measures (share of searches and share of hiring companies). Full method below.

Key findings, November 2026

Paid media is where demand is growing. Paid media and performance roles are about 25% of 2026 role searches. Their share rose from about 19% in the first half to about 32% since July, and the share of hiring companies asking for one rose from about a quarter to about a third.
Delivery roles stay near the top, with a smaller share. Project and account management is about 16% of 2026 searches and among our top requested role families. Its share eased after July (from about 19% to about 12%) as paid media grew.
Creative demand is steady. Design and creative roles hold at about 18% of 2026 searches, with little change between the two halves of the year.
Social roles are rising from a smaller base. Social media and content roles more than doubled their share of searches after July. Growth and marketing leadership roles are now requested by a wider spread of companies, though their share of searches moved less.
Requests are getting more senior by title. The share of searches with Senior, Lead, Head or Director in the job title rose from about 13% in the first half of 2026 to about 26% since July.

Numbered for reference, not ranked.

Demand by role family, 2026 year to date

Families listed alphabetically.

Role family	Share of 2026 role searches	Direction since July	What is in it
Data and analytics	about 5%	Cooling	Marketing analytics, BI, data and pricing analysts, analytics and reporting engineers
Design and creative	about 18%	Steady	Graphic, visual, motion and UX/UI designers, art and creative directors, video editors, copywriters
Developers	about 4%	Steady	Web, CMS, Shopify and full-stack developers, product engineers
Email, lifecycle and CRM	about 4%	Steady	Email and lifecycle marketers, HubSpot and CRM specialists
Growth and marketing leadership	about 7%	Steady	Growth leads and strategists, marketing and digital marketing managers, eCommerce leads
Operations and admin support	about 8%	Steady	Executive and operations assistants, customer experience, sales and finance support
Paid media and performance	about 25%	Rising	Paid search and paid social specialists and analysts, programmatic and Amazon Ads specialists, media buyers, CRO
Project and account management	about 16%	Cooling	Project managers (creative, client services), account managers, creative operations
SEO and AEO	about 7%	Cooling	SEO, local SEO, AEO/GEO and content-SEO specialists
Social media and content	about 6%	Rising	Social media managers and strategists, social content designers, creator strategists

Source: Talent Scout Hiring Index, November 2026 edition (Talent Scout CRM role searches, January 1 to October 28, 2026). Shares are rounded and may not sum to 100%. Direction rule below.

What we are seeing

Companies that already hired with us are adding media capacity. About half of the paid media searches opened since July came from companies that had hired with us before, including agencies adding media seats around delivery teams they built first: the people who manage the client first, then the people who run the spend. One New York performance agency followed exactly that order. Read the case study.

SEO and AEO: a smaller share since July. SEO and AEO specialists are among our top five requested roles in 2026. In the Index the family is about 7% of 2026 searches, and its share eased after July as paid media grew. We read that as a shift in mix, not a drop-off: companies that hired an SEO/AEO specialist in the first half are now adding paid and social seats around them.

Titles are moving up. About a quarter of searches since July carry a senior, lead, head or director title, up from about one in eight in the first half. Every search we run is for senior people (roughly five or more years in the discipline); the change is in how companies title the seat, and it shows more requests for people who own a function, not only execute in it.

What this means if you are hiring

If you need paid media talent, start early. Its share grew by more than 12 points between the two halves of the year, and the hardest specialist seats (Amazon Ads, paid search analysis) take longer to fill than generalist ones.
Price the seat before you write the job description. Our 2026 Latin American Marketing Salary Report has US fully loaded costs by role. Talent Scout places senior talent at $3,500 to $4,500 a month all-in, as of November 2026.
Compare with the US market. Our 2026 Marketing Hiring Gap Report shows how long US marketing job postings stay open. The Index shows what companies ask us for instead.

Role pages for the families in this edition: paid media / Google Ads specialist, project manager, graphic designer, SEO specialist, social media manager, and every marketing role we place.

Methodology

Source. Talent Scout's CRM. A "role search" is a search a company opened with us for one specific role. Every search opened between January 1 and October 28, 2026 is included, whether it was filled, is still open, or was closed. A search for several identical seats counts once. Entries that were not a role (placeholders, records titled only with a name, ambiguous abbreviations) are excluded, as are duplicate records of the same search.

Who is in it. US and North American agencies and brands hiring senior marketing, creative and operations talent in Latin America through Talent Scout. We do not publish the number of searches or companies.

Role families. Each search title is assigned to one of ten families by a fixed keyword rule (for example, titles containing "paid", "PPC", "media buyer" or "Amazon" go to paid media and performance, including paid media analysts). The same rule runs on every edition, so editions are comparable.

Two measures. Share of role searches shows where the volume of requests is. Share of hiring companies shows how widely a role is requested, so one company opening many searches cannot move a finding on its own.

Direction rule. We compare January 1 to June 30 with July 1 to October 28, 2026. A family is Rising if its share went up by 3 points or more on both measures, Cooling if it went down by 3 points or more on both, and Steady otherwise.

Seniority signal. The share of searches whose title contains Senior, Sr, Lead, Head or Director. It measures how the seat is titled, not candidate experience.

What is not in this edition. Agency versus brand mix (our client-type field is not complete enough to report yet), country of hire, pay, and fill rates.

Refresh. Updated each quarter on this page. Previous editions stay listed below with their dates.

How to cite. Talent Scout Hiring Index, November 2026 edition. Talent Scout, https://www.gettalentscout.com/hiring-index. Data: Talent Scout role searches, January 1 to October 28, 2026.

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