Outplacement in media and marketing

Artificial intelligence, changing media use, declining print reach, new advertising formats and rising cost pressure are fundamentally changing the media and marketing industry. At the same time, the digital advertising market keeps growing.

A whole series of established business models is under pressure: print → digital, reach → engagement, mass communication → personalisation, production → automation. And above it all stands a technology that changes the industry faster than many previous innovations: artificial intelligence. Yet it is not a pure story of decline: the German advertising market grew 2.3% to €50.9 billion in 2025, and commercial advertising employs around 900,000 people according to the ZAW.

So the market is not disappearing. It is shifting. And that shift changes the careers of specialists and executives.

Why media and marketing are in structural change

AI is changing content production: text, images, video, translations and social-media posts can be created faster and more cheaply. According to Bitkom, 84% see AI as one of the most important marketing trends to 2027; two-thirds assume marketing will no longer be successful without AI, while 52% still lack the competence to use it well. The challenge is no longer to avoid AI, but to translate it meaningfully into value creation.

AI does not simply replace creativity — it changes its economics. The easier content is to produce, the more the value of pure production falls and the more the value of strategy, brand understanding, storytelling, audience understanding, data analysis, creative conception and editorial judgement rises.

Classic media models and the ad market are shifting

In publishing the change is especially clear: print stays relevant, but circulation and advertising revenue decline, while e-paper and paid content grow markedly — print still partly finances the transformation, while digital increasingly decides the future. The advertising market shifts too: net investment in dialogue media rose to €26.6 billion, while classic media fell to €18.6 billion; digital video grew 16% in 2025, while linear television fell 9.2%.

Job cuts and a skills shortage at once

Here too, companies can cut jobs and seek new competencies at the same time: when content production is automated, campaigns centralised, agency services reduced or print activities cut, roles can disappear — while demand rises for data analytics, performance marketing, AI, marketing automation, CRM, product management, digital publishing and audience development. Marketing and media competencies do not simply vanish. What changes is which of them are especially valuable economically.

Your market value is greater than your job title

A "Marketing Director" is classically positioned as "20 years of marketing". A competency analysis instead reveals brand strategy, go-to-market, customer acquisition, CRM, digitalisation, performance marketing, data analysis, leadership and transformation — transferable to growth, digital transformation, customer experience, commercial strategy and marketing technology.

The question is not "Which marketing position is there?" but "Which growth, customer or transformation problems can I solve for a company?"

For specialists too, repositioning is decisive: a "Senior Content Manager" competes with automated production. Instead of "I produce content", "I develop data-based content strategies and use AI to increase reach, relevance and efficiency" is convincing — a fundamentally different market value.

Which competencies become more important

• AI competence — not just prompting, but integrating AI meaningfully into processes and business models.
• Data and analytics — understanding audiences, conversion, reach and customer behaviour.
• Marketing automation — automated CRM and communication processes gain importance.
• Performance and economics — marketing is measured by its measurable contribution to business success.
• Strategy and brand management — the easier production becomes, the more valuable strategy and credible brands are.
• Audience development — winning users, retaining them and developing them into paying customers.

The future belongs to the combination of creativity, data and technology: creativity + data + AI + business understanding, editorial + SEO + audience development + analytics, or marketing + CRM + automation + AI. People who master these interfaces are especially valuable.

Which target markets come into question

Experience from media & marketing	Conceivable target markets
Content strategy	technology, healthcare, industry, finance
Digital marketing	cross-industry
Performance marketing	e-commerce, SaaS, consumer
Brand management	consumer goods, automotive, pharma
Corporate communications	industry, energy, finance
Editorial / content	corporate publishing, communications
SEO / audience development	e-commerce, media, technology
Marketing automation	SaaS, retail, finance
Data-driven marketing	almost all industries
PR / reputation	companies, consulting, associations

For former agency or media managers especially, moving to the client side is often an interesting step.

A different logic applies to executives

A marketing or media manager is hired not only for communication competence, but for growth, brand development, digitalisation, transformation, customer retention, internationalisation and efficiency. "Chief Marketing Officer of a media company" can become: "Leader for growth, brand and digital transformation with experience in developing data-driven business models." For top managers, the question is whether they can lead a company from a traditional communications model into a digital, data-driven business model. Media experience becomes the evidence; transformation experience becomes the market value.

What affected professionals should do after job cuts

1. Analyse your competency profile. Which skills lie beyond content, campaigns or editorial work?
2. Quantify results. Which reach, revenue, leads, subscriptions or efficiency gains were achieved?
3. Assess your AI capability. Which of your own activities can be automated — and which competencies arise from that?
4. Widen industry options. Which companies outside the media sector need exactly this profile?
5. Develop a positioning. Which concrete business problem does my expertise stand for?
6. Choose market access strategically. Networks, referrals, direct approaches and executive search — the core of our KARENT PLACEMENT approach.

What professional outplacement consulting can achieve

For media and marketing experts, the challenge is often not a lack of experience, but that the experience is described too narrowly. Professional outplacement develops an economically more relevant competency profile from content, editorial work, campaigns, PR and marketing: assessment, competency transfer, target-market analysis, repositioning, executive positioning, and network and interview strategy.

The industry produces value — just differently

The advertising market grows but shifts markedly towards digital and dialogue-oriented channels; classic media models are under pressure, while digital products, paid content and data-based business models grow. AI accelerates the change: content is produced faster, marketing becomes more automated, data more important, brands more valuable, strategic competence more decisive.

The easier content is to produce, the more important the people who know which content is relevant, why it is relevant and how it creates economic value. The loss of a position does not automatically mean a loss of professional value.