Advertising Salaries & Salary Outlook

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It is possible to enter advertising with little or no formal training, but having a degree in the field can potentially open more doors. In addition, the insights you receive from advertising degree programs can often help you move up the career ladder faster.

Advertising Salary

Advertisers play a crucial role in business; they invent, discover, and develop vital communication lines between companies and end users. The best product in the world has little chance of success unless owners can generate awareness, recall, and product satisfaction. This is why advertising degree holders often enjoy such strong demand and lucrative salaries for their services. They help create the face and image of whatever companies they serve.

How Much Can You Make with an Advertising Degree?

Even the lowest 10 precent of advertising sales agents earned a median salary of $40,090 in 2008. The median annual salary for advertising and promotion managers was $80,220 in that same year. Your success as an advertiser depends on many factors, including training, experience, past successes, and the nature of your relationship with the company you serve.

Your Advertising Degree, Experience, and Training

Although there are no formal prerequisites for most advertising positions, employers tend to favor those with more formal training and relevant experience on the job. Thus, having a master’s degree plus ten years in the industry can often open more doors than a bachelor’s advertising degree and five years on the job. However, given how the advertising industry is structured, experience and training are not always the most important factors.

Success in past advertising campaigns can make it easier for you to secure lucrative contracts in the future, regardless of your official credentials. Advertising is a competitive business in which talented professionals can command higher salaries and commissions. However, in order to achieve an impressive track record, you might consider the merits of extensive formal training. An advertising degree can teach you both the theoretical and practical building blocks necessary to impact the marketplace. Intuition and independent learning might be enough to master essentials like consumer psychology, graphic design, economics, information technology, and e-commerce, but advertising is not an industry terribly conducive to trial and error. Formal training can increase the likelihood of building up a portfolio of past successes.

Your Advertising Degree and Firm Relationship

If you work in-house, you might receive a lower salary than if you work with a full-fledged advertising agency that provides external consultation. This is because in-house staff often receive full-time salaries, while advertisers with specialized firms typically receive commissions.

If you want to position yourself for higher salary potential, you should consider master’s training or above, followed by years of building up an impressive portfolio within an advertising firm. If you manage to climb up to the top 25 percent of earners, your salary could be in excess of the median $119,900 a year. And because new positions within the advertising industry are expected to grow more quickly than the national average for most other occupations, it is possible that all of the median salary ranges listed above could become even more attractive. Higher demand often places upward pressure on existing income levels as employers try to fill more positions with fewer available candidates. A masters degree with extensive experience can improve your potential employment prospects considerably.

Stanley Rubenti
Stanely Rubenti is a world traveling writer and editor who has lived in Japan, the US, Thailand, and France. He currently resides in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where he offers college admissions advice for international students interested in studying abroad.

Find Advertising Schools Near You

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