Types of Advertising Degrees

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Earn your degree in advertising and enter a career that’s worlds away from the typical office job. This field is defined and permeated by competition. Creativity, marketing prowess, and ambition are pre-requisites for any career in advertising. Learn what it means to work in advertising, including salary figures and typical job responsibilities.

Advertising Education

Looking for an advertising career that’s out of the ordinary? Ever wonder what makes people buy certain products? Working in advertising puts you behind the scenes, working with media representatives, companies, and individuals to sell products and services.

Advertising sales agents may work as inside or outside agents. Outside sales agents travel to businesses, selling directly to the source. Inside sales agents stay close to the office, often working online or calling clients. Agents and their managers can be found in media firms and ad agencies.

A Day in the Life of an Advertising Sales Agent

There’s no such thing as a typical day for an advertising sales agent. A day might begin with editing a contract for a big client and finish with organizing a commercial taping session. An agent might analyze sales statistics to determine how a future advertisement might behave in the market, report the findings to management, and then hop on a plane to pitch a new campaign based on that data directly to the client. It’s not unusual to find a team of agents working together through the night to create an entirely new media kit for a company.

Because working as a sales agent requires so many different skills, advertising degree and certificate programs cover a wide range of topics. When you enroll in an advertising degree program, you can be confident that the education you recieve will be as diverse as it is interesting and as technically challenging as it is fun.

Advertising Career Training

Your specific career goals help determine the type of coursework you complete. Many advertising sales agents hold a bachelor’s degree in advertising. Typical coursework in an advertising degree or certificate program includes the following elements:

• Advertising strategies
• Marketing writing
• Graphic design
• Social psychology

Advertising managers often hold an MBA degree, particularly in competitive markets. Job experience is also weighted heavily in the advancement process. In the advertising industry, the quality of your work and client satisfaction speaks for itself.

Advertising Salary & Career Information

As with any exciting, challenging career, working in advertising comes with some stress. Advertising sales agents and their managers should be motivated, self-starting, hard-working individuals who can handle criticism and rejection from clients. Monthly sales quotas add more pressure to sales agents, and those who see quotas as a positive challenge are likely to be the most successful.

Careers in advertising are lucrative, no two ways about it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that advertising sales agents earned mean annual wages of $53,170 in 2008. That same year, advertising managers earned $94,720. Employment of advertising sales agents is expected to grow faster than average in the coming years, with about 35,000 careers expected to enter the field between 2006 and 2016.

While no career training program can promise graduates a particular career or salary, hiring managers in the advertising industry typically prefer or require formal education among applicants. Even applicants with extensive work experience in the field are encouraged to obtain a degree for most positions. Advertising is competitive by nature, and every part of the industry reflects that. If you’ve got the drive and the advertising degree, chances are, you’ve got the job.

Amelia Gray
Amelia Gray is a freelance business writer with years of experience in the field. She is teaches business writing at a major, online university.

Find Advertising Schools Near You

Find the right school today.