IAB Polska's Point of Youth report finds under-30s view digital marketing as neutral territory - creative but losing to IT in the talent war, complicated by AI anxiety.
Poland's digital advertising industry received a pointed reality check on April 3, 2026, when IAB Polska published its "Praca w digitalu - klasa czy obciach?" report - loosely translated as "Working in digital - cool or cringe?" The findings, developed by the IAB Point of Youth initiative and research firm IQS, reveal that the generation most immersed in digital environments is also, paradoxically, the least excited about working in them.
The report draws on a survey of 300 Polish respondents aged 18 to 30, conducted between November 13 and 16, 2025, using the Omnisurv by IQS platform. Results were first presented publicly on March 4, 2026, at the IAB ExpertPanel in Warsaw. The full publication followed in early April.
Among respondents, 11% described their attitude toward digital marketing as "decidedly positive," while 34% said "rather positive." The largest share landed on neutral. Just 6% said "rather negative" and 1% "decidedly negative." Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed associate digital marketing with creativity and inventiveness. The most frequently cited associations - entertainment, freedom, and spontaneity - suggest young Poles see the field as a creative space rather than purely a sales machine.
But the headline number sits elsewhere: close to two-thirds of respondents rate professional development opportunities in the industry as "rather large" or "very large." Around half see the sector as stable or rather stable. Working conditions earned favorable marks from 83% of respondents - a combination of "very good" and "rather good" assessments. Flexibility, remote work options, and creative scope all received mentions. These are solid figures. They are also not translating into desire.
Despite the positive attributes, digital marketing does not rank as the most sought-after career destination among Polish youth. IT does. According to the report, technology consistently tops aspirational career rankings among this age group, leaving marketing to compete on secondary ground.
According to Włodzimierz Schmidt, President of IAB Polska, this neutral positioning is not necessarily a crisis. "This neutral attitude of young people toward the marketing communications sector is, contrary to appearances, a positive signal for the entire industry. It means there are no clear image barriers or strong prejudices that could limit the influx of new talent," he stated. Schmidt argues the industry should use this window strategically, building narratives grounded in real competencies, innovation, and the measurable business impact of digital marketing.
He also pushed back against the assumption that marketing and IT sit in entirely separate boxes. "Contemporary e-marketing is largely based on technical and IT competencies, requiring constant knowledge updates and agile navigation of a dynamically changing tool ecosystem. For many specialists, this may constitute an attractive and developmental alternative to working in the IT sector - one that combines a technological base with a strategic and creative dimension," Schmidt added.
The observation tracks with broader industry realities. The IAB Tech Lab's AI in Advertising Primer identified that digital advertising now demands skills spanning campaign management, audience targeting, performance analysis, and creative automation - a profile blurring the line between marketer and technologist. For younger professionals already fluent in these environments, the skill overlap may be more visible to them than the industry has historically acknowledged.
One finding stands out against conventional recruitment assumptions: young respondents ranked creativity and innovation above salary and career advancement potential when listing the perceived benefits of working in digital marketing. According to Paweł Kolenda, Omnisurv Director at IQS, this reflects a motivational profile centered on intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards.
"It's inventiveness that they associate with work in this sector, not security, and certainly not boredom and rigidity. A guarantee of no boredom is an important benefit that employers should communicate to future employees," Kolenda noted. The implication is practical: industry recruitment messaging that leads with salary benchmarks and career ladders may be targeting the wrong psychological levers for this cohort.
The picture is not uniformly positive. The most frequently cited negative of working in digital marketing is performance pressure, along with the psychological burden it generates. Rapidly shifting trends demand immediate responses, continuous blending of creativity with data analytics, and constant self-justification through metrics. This environment creates fertile ground for what the report's authors describe as "imposter syndrome" - particularly among those at the start of their careers.
The report notes that unclear career paths make entry into the sector more difficult than it needs to be. According to its authors, organizational practices and self-aware leaders can do much to reduce these pressures - provided those leaders can not only set targets but actively develop team competencies and build environments that support long-term growth.
The relational dimension of leadership emerged as significant. Mateusz Decyk, Strategist at Sales&More and a representative of IAB Point of Youth, observed that "the relationship with a manager becomes one of the key factors affecting job satisfaction - often more important than organizational benefits or formal employment conditions." Young workers' expectations of leaders center on soft competencies: clear communication, regular feedback, empathy, and psychological safety. These are not abstract ideals - they appear as concrete differentiators between workplaces that retain young talent and those that lose it.
When asked about the biggest obstacle to entering digital marketing, 35% of respondents identified competition. This exceeds concerns about salary levels or job availability. What drives this perception is not a scarcity of openings but rather a sense of an oversaturated market combined with limited knowledge of what the job actually entails day-to-day.
Young entrants report lacking familiarity with specific tools, struggling to keep pace with trend cycles, and remaining uncertain about what employers actually expect. The formal barrier to entry is low - digital marketing features heavily across university curricula, and short-form courses proliferate. The practical barrier, shaped by intense competition and fast-moving standards, is considerably higher.
According to Krzysztof Skóra, Media Assistant at Mediafarm and an IAB Point of Youth representative, universities have a meaningful role to play in closing this gap. "Universities can play a large role in reducing barriers such as lack of knowledge of tools or current trends in digital. The market is increasingly focused on analytics and data. More universities are incorporating practical tools into programs, such as GA4 or AI systems. It is clear that they are trying to keep up with industry standards," he commented.
Gen Z workers are already demonstrating unconventional approaches to job searching, with 46% having secured jobs or internships through TikTok in studies of U.S. labor markets. This behavioral pattern - bypassing traditional recruitment channels in favor of platform-native discovery - suggests the talent pipeline for digital marketing is itself evolving in ways the industry has not fully accommodated.
Artificial intelligence generates the most polarized responses of any topic in the report. Views among under-30s split sharply. One segment sees AI as a natural direction for industry development and a potential accelerant for career growth. An equally strong group fears automation, reduction of junior-level roles, and fundamental shifts in professional identity. A significant share responded "hard to say" - indicating that the actual impact of AI on employment remains genuinely unclear to many young people considering the sector.
The report frames AI as a dual force: it attracts interest and simultaneously repels. The practical concern is concrete. AI is absorbing the repetitive, operational tasks that historically served as natural entry points into digital marketing careers. Campaign reconciliation, basic audience segmentation, performance reporting - these were the building blocks of junior experience. The IAB Tech Lab CEO flagged this shift directly, noting that publishers had already begun closing open junior ad operations roles because "AI or agentic solutions allow you to do more with less."
The structural risk runs further. If organizations reduce investment in junior talent under the assumption that algorithms can cover entry-level outputs, the pipeline for future senior and leadership talent contracts. The report calls this a form of short-sighted recruitment thinking that could produce a competency gap within a decade.
Julia Cymerman, Junior Media Planner/Buyer at Hearts and Science and an IAB Point of Youth representative, challenged this logic directly. "We hear increasingly that AI will take over our work and it's better to bet on automation than on juniors. For me, this is a wrong assumption. Investment in juniors is not a cost, it's building foundations - because we must remember that today's juniors are tomorrow's leaders of this industry. AI is a great tool, but we must learn to make decisions and understand the market, and algorithms cannot do that for us," she stated.
This framing positions young professionals not as a workforce vulnerability but as the necessary human layer atop technological infrastructure. IAB Europe's research from September 2025 found that 85% of European digital advertising companies already deploy AI-based tools, with targeting and content generation leading adoption - but governance gaps and skills shortages remain significant barriers to realizing full value. The humans who understand both the technology and the strategic context remain the limiting resource.
The report's conclusion rejects the transactional framing of young talent as a renewable resource to be recruited and processed. Wiktoria Wójcik, co-founder of inStreamly and New Game +, and an IAB Point of Youth representative, argued that the next decade of digital marketing depends not on tools but on the industry's capacity for genuine cross-generational collaboration.
"Companies that understand that young people are not a threat, but a catalyst for change, will not only be able to survive but also redefine marketing," Wójcik stated. She called on organizations to stop measuring competence through years of experience and instead evaluate people through the unique value and agency they bring to organizations.
The report was developed by a group of young employees from IAB Polska member companies, working within the IAB Point of Youth initiative, in collaboration with IQS. Research was conducted in November 2025 on a sample of 300 Poles aged 18 to 30. The document is available for free download from the IAB Polska website.
For the marketing community, the data carries implications that extend well beyond Poland. IAB Spain's research into Gen Z brand preferences identified aesthetic sensibility and authenticity as primary engagement drivers for this age group - qualities that require human creative judgment to produce consistently. The competency profile that makes young people valuable to digital marketing organizations is the same profile AI cannot replicate: contextual understanding, cultural fluency, and adaptive strategic thinking.
The industry's challenge is not attracting talent that doesn't exist. It is demonstrating that the career on offer is worth the competition, pressure, and uncertainty that currently defines entry into the field.
Who: IAB Polska, through its IAB Point of Youth initiative, in collaboration with research firm IQS. Contributors include Włodzimierz Schmidt (President of IAB Polska), Paweł Kolenda (IQS), and several young industry professionals representing member companies.
What: A research report titled "Praca w digitalu - klasa czy obciach?" examining how Poles aged 18 to 30 perceive digital marketing as a career. Key findings include neutral-to-positive attitudes toward the sector, IT's dominance over marketing in career aspirations, performance pressure as the primary negative, competition as the main barrier to entry, and polarized views on AI's impact on employment.
When: Survey conducted November 13-16, 2025. First presented March 4, 2026 at IAB ExpertPanel in Warsaw. Full report published April 3, 2026.
Where: Poland. The survey was conducted online via the Omnisurv by IQS platform with a nationally representative sample of 300 adults aged 18 to 30. Findings were publicly presented in Warsaw.
Why: The report aims to provide the Polish digital marketing industry with data-driven insight into how the next generation of workers perceives the sector - identifying both the opportunities and structural obstacles that will shape talent recruitment, retention, and development over the coming decade.