How long US marketing roles stay open, and what they cost to fill. Original analysis of 6,731 job postings by Talent Scout. Published August 2026.
Source: 6,731 unique US job postings collected August 24, 2026 via the Adzuna job aggregation API, covering a 60-day posting window across 16 marketing, creative, and operations roles (paid media manager, media buyer, performance marketing manager, growth marketing manager, SEO specialist, SEO manager, content marketing manager, social media manager, email marketing manager, marketing operations manager, graphic designer, brand designer, copywriter, video editor, marketing project manager, marketing manager). Postings deduplicated by listing ID.
Listing-age rule: "still advertising" measures the days between a posting's creation date and the collection date for postings live at collection. We measure listing age, not confirmed fill status.
Salary rule: benchmark statistics use ONLY employer-stated salaries (n=1,914 annual postings). Estimated or modeled salaries were excluded, as were 91 hourly-coded rows under $20,000. Salary figures are the midpoint of each posting's stated range.
Seniority classification: by job-title markers. "Senior" = titles containing senior, lead, principal, head of, director, or VP (n=568). "Junior" = junior, entry, assistant, associate, or coordinator (n=114). Unmarked titles are treated as mid-level (n=1,232).
Exclusions: the generic "marketing manager" query returned only 5 employer-stated salaries, including product-marketing outliers above $360,000; it is excluded from the per-role salary table as statistically unreliable.
Cross-checks: this report's advertised medians were compared against independent published figures. Paid media manager: our $102,500 vs Glassdoor's $101,217 median total pay (within 1.3%). Growth marketing manager: our $132,938 vs Glassdoor's $131,000 (within 1.5%). Media buyer: our $113,377 advertised vs Glassdoor's $97,000 self-reported, a divergence consistent with advertised ranges reflecting current-market offers plus the role's bonus-heavy pay structure. Anchor context from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2024): marketing managers' median wage $161,030, advertising and promotions managers $126,960, consistent with this report's senior tier.
Share of postings still advertising 30 or more days after going live, by role:
| Role | Still advertising at 30+ days | Postings analyzed |
|---|---|---|
| Social media manager | 42.2% | 481 |
| Media buyer | 40.6% | 488 |
| Video editor | 34.5% | 429 |
| Paid media manager | 31.6% | 500 |
| Performance marketing manager | 30.4% | 464 |
| Marketing manager | 29.9% | 445 |
| Growth marketing manager | 28.4% | 412 |
| Marketing project manager | 28.3% | 420 |
| Copywriter | 28.1% | 437 |
| SEO manager | 27.9% | 423 |
| SEO specialist | 27.9% | 140 |
| Brand designer | 26.8% | 471 |
| Email marketing manager | 21.9% | 442 |
| Marketing operations manager | 20.8% | 462 |
| Graphic designer | 17.8% | 493 |
| Content marketing manager | 17.0% | 224 |
The pattern worth noticing: the roles that age worst are execution-heavy specialist seats. The social channels, the media buying desks, the edit bays. A role still being advertised a month later is a role still consuming recruiting budget, manager attention, and unstaffed output.
The median advertised salary across all roles and levels is $97,500. For senior-marked roles, it is $135,000. By role, from the postings where employers stated pay:
| Role | Senior median (n) | All-levels median (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Brand designer | $165,000 (49) | $145,300 (96) |
| Growth marketing manager | $156,500 (39) | $132,938 (150) |
| Performance marketing manager | $153,938 (46) | $126,250 (122) |
| Marketing operations manager | $145,000 (41) | $123,275 (110) |
| Media buyer | $137,500 (50) | $113,377 (134) |
| Paid media manager | $135,000 (68) | $102,500 (142) |
| Video editor | $130,000 (48) | $78,500 (209) |
| Content marketing manager | $130,000 (24) | $120,000 (66) |
| SEO manager | $122,500 (43) | $97,000 (156) |
| Copywriter | $110,000 (73) | $95,000 (168) |
| Email marketing manager | $95,846 (23) | $75,000 (138) |
| Social media manager | Not enough data | $77,500 (198) |
| SEO specialist | Not enough data | $85,000 (45) |
| Graphic designer | Not enough data | $67,500 (73) |
| Marketing project manager | Not enough data | $84,625 (102) |
"Not enough data" means fewer than 10 postings for that role stated a salary at the senior level. Rather than publish a median built on a handful of listings, we leave the cell blank. Every published figure in this table clears that minimum.
Junior-marked roles advertise a median of $62,814. Unmarked mid-level roles: $87,500. Senior-marked roles: $135,000. The gradient is steep and clean, and it compounds the gap: the seats that stay open longest are often the ones where senior-level execution matters most.
In this report, senior means the employer said so in the title. At Talent Scout, senior means something more specific: roughly five or more years of hands-on experience in the specialist's own discipline. Five years running paid media, five years designing, five years editing. Not five years since graduation.
Public US job postings aggregated by Adzuna, a job search engine indexing thousands of boards and company career pages, whose data has been used by the UK government's official labor dashboard. Only employer-stated salaries were used for benchmark statistics.
Advertised salary is what an employer actually faces when they open a role today. Self-reported figures (like review-site salary data) measure what current employees say they earn, a different and older number. We cross-reference both.
Not necessarily. We measure listing age: how long a posting has stayed live. Some aged listings reflect slow takedowns rather than open seats. The methodology states this plainly, and the pattern across 6,731 postings is still a meaningful signal of hiring friction.
Yes, annually. The 2027 edition will use the same methodology for year-over-year comparison.
A Miami-based nearshore recruiting company (founded 2025) placing senior Latin American marketing, creative, and operations talent as full-time embedded hires with US agencies, brands, and in-house teams. Details: official company facts.
Talent Scout places senior, embedded Latin American specialists with US agencies, brands, and in-house teams. Candidates in 10 days, free replacement at any time, month-to-month terms.
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