Around 600 media agency staff have completed a new industry program designed to fast track digital skills and knowledge into the industry.
The Digital Foundations Certification Program is a collaboration between the Media Federation of Australia (MFA) and agencies across the industry, culminating in a a two-hour exam in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
It consists of several in-house training modules covering digital media essentials, including terminology, planning and trading models, and evaluation and measurement metrics. Agencies have committed to make the program compulsory for all staff with less than a year's experience.
The program is designed for media buyers but AdNews understands there are discussions about whether future iterations could focus on marketers.
In the program’s first intake, 77% of participants achieved the minimum 80% exam result, led by Brisbane participants, who had an average of 85%, with 8% achieving more than 95%.
PHD’s chief digital officer Stuart Bailey, who chairs the MFA Interactive Group, says the course sets baseline digital knowledge for media agency talent.
“Digital is our future, and as other forms of media continue to digitise, it’s vital that our industry has consistent, quality and up-to-date education on best practice approaches for clients,” Bailey says.
“We are an industry where focus on the negative is often the default and it was great to be part of a project that celebrates what we can do when we work together and focus on solutions rather than problems.”
The digital skills gap has been a major problem plaguing the media industry for several years and this initiative represents the first time agencies have come together to tackle the problem at an industry-wide level.
Maxus national head of investment Ricky Chanana, who facilitated a number of the training modules, said the “cross pollination” of agency digital heads to develop the program has been its "single biggest USP”.
“This also means we had been able to run various sessions with multiple senior leads within our industry and share real life experiences which has helped the younger guys,” Chanana adds.
“The aim for MFA Digital Foundations courses is to escalate the digital learning curve for everyone who is coming into the industry. The biggest advantage of this is that it jumpstarts all the entry-level roles to then enrol themselves into their choice of more specialised disciplines such as programmatic, SEM, social etc.”
Chanana told AdNews that the program was not only useful to young talent, it would also help ensure a baseline knowledge for media buyers who have offline backgrounds.
"All the TV buying poeple who have been doing this for years, there's an influx of those to move into digital and learn digital. We need to extrapolate this out to offline people with low or no digital knowledge," Chanana says.
"This is a vital program, media is converging and you need a baseline knowledge of what digital is, how you plan and how you buy."
Learning about the 'pillars of digital'
Medialab trading executive Brianna Wells completed the course in Sydney recently. She says understanding digital provides context for an entire campaign and "how the media plan supports digital strategy".
“The program covered different areas of the digital landscape separately so we could learn about all pillars of digital as opposed to getting a really broad overview,” Wells explains.
“Search was an area that I had zero exposure to prior to the program commencing, I now understand the foundations for how it all works and how it directly links to the work I do as an offline trader.”
The final exams go beyond wrote learning, encouraging participants to fully understand and apply digital concepts into media planning scenarios.
“Often two out of four answers were technically correct, however we had to use both our knowledge gained throughout the course and work experience to determine the answer that would achieve the best outcome,” she says.
MFA CEO Sophie Madden says having a strong and consistent foundation of digital knowledge is important for an industry that is becoming increasingly digital.
“We’re thrilled with the results of our first exam and to see so many members of our industry upskilling in this crucial area," Maden says.
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