IAB salary survey reveals highest-earning roles in SA’s digital agencies

IAB SA today revealed South Africa’s “first-ever” digital industry salary survey, which itself revealed some interesting statistics about payrolls in the country’s agency scene.

The survey, completed in partnership with Millward Brown, “benchmarks the salaries of specialist skills in a way that is relevant to the South African digital marketing and communication industry”.

“This is the first time that the IAB SA has conducted a survey that focuses solely on the dynamic roles in the South African digital industry and their compensation,” explains IAB SA’s head of agencies Fred Roed.

As for the results, there are some interesting findings.

If your key driving factor is mountains of pay, “content writers, database analysts, community managers, photographers/videographers and front-end developers” are not job titles you’ll likely want. Workers in these fields earn the least impressive salaries in digital agencies.

Top earning titles within agencies include “project director, art director, paid search manager, account director and operations manager”.

Programmers also earn up to 26% less while working at agencies as opposed to an ICT firm, as “development isn’t the primary core capability of digital agencies,” the IAB explains.

Beyond specific jobs, those in larger agencies can earn up to 8% more than those in medium-sized agencies, but in contrast, those new to the industry were found to earn higher salaries at medium agencies.

The survey was conducted between 25 August 2015 and 30 November 2015.