How to get into advertising in 2026: the roles, whether you need a degree, the free schools and apprenticeships that still work, what graduate schemes are left, and what the jobs pay.
There is no single answer to how to get into advertising, which is the first thing worth knowing. People arrive through a portfolio and a string of placements, through a two-year graduate scheme at a media agency, through a Level 3 apprenticeship, through a free night school, or by turning up at the right talk and being memorable. The IPA, the agencies’ trade body, puts it plainly on its careers page: a degree is one route among many, not a requirement.
The second thing worth knowing is that the front door has narrowed. The IPA Agency Census 2025 counted 24,963 people in member agencies on 1 September 2025, down 6.8 per cent in a year, with the number of staff aged 25 and under falling 19.2 per cent and only 43.4 per cent of agencies employing graduate trainees or apprentices, down from 56 per cent. Major Players’ Creative Industries Census, published in April 2026, found junior roles made up 21.9 per cent of vacancies, down 6.8 per cent in twelve months. What follows is how to get in anyway.
Agencies divide into a handful of disciplines, and the route in differs for each. Creative departments hire in pairs, a copywriter and an art director who have built a portfolio together. Strategy, sometimes still called planning, is the department that turns research into the brief and the argument; we describe the job in how to approach a campaign. Account management runs the client relationship and the work through the building, and is the most common graduate entry point at creative agencies.
Media agencies, which plan and buy the airtime and the inventory, are now as large as the creative side: the 2025 census counted 12,304 people in media agencies against 12,659 in creative and other agencies, and media headcount grew 2.4 per cent while creative fell 14.3 per cent. Production has become a discipline of its own, with integrated and social content producers the most sought-after profiles in the Major Players data. Effectiveness and data roles, from econometrics to marketing science, are the fastest-growing corner and the one where a numerate graduate with no portfolio has the clearest run.
| Discipline | What the job is | Usual first title | London average, permanent, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creative | Ideas, scripts, headlines and layouts, working as a team | Junior creative team (art director and copywriter) | £34,000 per person; junior copywriter alone £27,000 |
| Strategy | Research, insight, the brief and the argument for the work | Junior strategist or planner | £42,000 |
| Account management | Client relationship, timings, budgets, getting the work made | Account executive | £30,000; senior account executive £34,000 |
| Media | Planning and buying channels, audiences and budgets | Media planner or media buyer | £35,000 |
| Production | Making the film, the shoot, the content and the assets | Junior producer | £37,000 to £39,000 depending on sector |
| Effectiveness and data | Measuring what worked, econometrics, analytics | Graduate or junior analyst | Not broken out for juniors in the census |
Salary figures are from the Major Players Creative Industries Census 2026, which drew on 4,024 employees and job seekers and 266 companies and is weighted to London. Read them as the top of the market rather than the floor: careers sites such as targetjobs put typical entry-level advertising salaries at £22,000 to £30,000 nationally.
No, and the industry has spent a decade building routes that prove it. Creative departments have never cared where a portfolio came from, only whether the ideas in it are good. Strategy and account management lean more on graduates, but the apprenticeship standards below were written to change that. The honest caveat is that a degree still helps at the larger networks’ graduate schemes, most of which ask for one, and that a related degree in advertising, marketing or design is neither necessary nor, on its own, sufficient.
SCA 2.0, as it now styles itself, is the portfolio school in Brixton run by its founder and dean Marc Lewis. It offers a London portfolio course and an online version, and its courses page is taking enrolments for September 2026. The school’s claim is that more than 80 per cent of students are employed at leading agencies within six months of finishing. It is fee-paying, and the site asks applicants to book a call rather than publishing a price.
Shift is D&AD’s free night school for creative people without a degree, running since 2016 in the UK and now in the US, Brazil, Germany and Australia. Shift London 2026 closed applications on 23 July, held its challenge day on 3 August and starts on 22 August, with a showcase to industry in January 2027 where Shifters present portfolios and pursue placements. It runs on evenings and occasional weekends across 120 hours, in person and online, so it fits around a paid job, and partners including Amazon Ads, Diageo and Uber set real briefs.
Founded by Ally Owen, Brixton Finishing School runs a free eight-week summer school for 18 to 25 year olds from under-represented backgrounds, with 50 places in 2026, more than 50 masterclasses, mentoring and no CVs or cover letters: places are allocated through assessment events. Its online arm, The ADcademy, is free and open to 18 to 30 year olds anywhere in the UK, and ADcademy LIVE runs week-long virtual intensives. The school reports that 70 per cent of its 2023 graduates won an industry role, down from an average of 90 per cent between 2019 and 2022, which tells you something about the market as well as the school. Applications for the 2026 summer school have closed; sign up to The ADcademy to hear about 2027.
The IPA’s Foundation Certificate is the qualification agencies most often put new joiners through: 30 hours of online learning and a two-hour exam, for anyone with under a year’s experience, at £275 plus VAT for members and £550 plus VAT for everyone else, with exam sittings on 29 September and 24 November 2026. More than 17,000 people have taken it. Doing it before you are hired is a modest but real signal. The IPA also runs Advertising Unlocked, an industry-wide open day for schools and colleges on Thursday 12 November 2026, where students work on real briefs and pitch to agency staff.
On 21 May 2026 the Advertising Association and Media Smart launched free virtual work experience on the Springpod platform: up to seven hours of self-paced content, one strand on creative roles with Neverland and one on commercial roles with Bauer Media Group, ending in a certificate. It is aimed at young people with no existing contact with the industry, which is exactly the person who most needs a line on the CV that says they have seen inside an agency.
Creative Equals’ Creative Comeback is for the other kind of entrant: art directors, copywriters and designers who have been out of work for at least twelve months and want back in. It is a two-week programme run with D&AD and sponsored by Diageo, in London, New York and Mumbai, and 79 per cent of its pilot UK cohort returned to work. For students and the newly graduated, the D&AD New Blood Awards set real briefs from real brands, 2026’s including Duolingo, HSBC, L’Oréal and Twix, and a New Blood Pencil is the single most portable line a junior portfolio can carry. The 2026 winners have been announced and D&AD is running a free “Brief In 2026” course on how to answer the briefs.
The IPA lists six standards agencies regularly use, all at Level 3: Advertising and Media Executive (up to 18 months, funding band £11,000), Junior Advertising Creative (up to 18 months, £11,000), Content Creator (up to 12 months, £10,000), Multi-Channel Marketer (up to 18 months, £11,000), Data Technician (up to 24 months, £12,000) and Associate Project Manager. An apprentice is a paid employee with holiday, and spends at least six hours a week in off-the-job training with a college or provider. The schemes are only available at companies with an English office, though anyone in the UK can take a place.
The Advertising and Media Executive standard has two pathways, one towards the creative and account side and one towards media, and the IPA Foundation Certificate is built into its assessment. Apprentices on it typically progress to account executive or media planner, the same first rung a graduate would reach. Dentsu’s UK early careers pages list an Entry Level Academy and apprenticeships, and Ogilvy UK advertises its Pipe apprenticeship on its careers page. Vacancies appear on the government’s Find an Apprenticeship service and on the agencies’ own job boards rather than through UCAS.
The structured, named advertising graduate scheme is a rarer animal than the careers sites suggest, and the census figure above, under half of agencies taking any graduates or apprentices, is the number to hold in your head. Media agencies are the exception. The independent media agency the7stars runs a two-year graduate scheme; its 2026 intake closed to applications on 26 April 2026, and its careers page was advertising a Graduate Analyst role in September 2026. The big media networks recruit graduates in cohorts too, but under changing names as the holding companies restructure, so search the company’s own job board rather than an old blog post.
Timing matters more than the scheme name. Most agency graduate applications open in the autumn, from around October, for a start the following summer, and the media agencies tend to close in the spring; Bright Network, targetjobs and Prospects keep running deadline lists. Creative agencies mostly hire account executives one at a time, when a client win creates a seat, which is why a speculative approach in the week a big pitch result is announced works better than a form in October.
A creative book is eight to twelve campaigns, each an idea that could run across several media, with the idea doing the work rather than the finish. Creative directors read a book in about four minutes, so the first campaign is the interview. Spec work is fine and expected; real briefs from New Blood and from the schools are better because the constraint is real. A book with one brilliant idea and seven competent ones is weaker than a book with four brilliant ones, so cut.
The book crit is the industry’s oldest hiring mechanism and it has not been replaced; Shift’s January showcase and Brixton’s assessment events are crits by another name. Outside of a programme, the way in is still the polite email to a creative director or a senior team, with a link and a single line about why them, asking for twenty minutes. Most say no; some say yes, and the ones who say yes tend to remember you when a placement opens. Ask what to cut before you ask what they liked.
The Major Players census is the most detailed public dataset and it is not cheerful. Permanent salaries rose 1.7 per cent year on year in 2026, freelance day rates 1.2 per cent, the slowest growth the creative industries have recorded since before Covid and well below the ONS private-sector average of 3.4 per cent. Only 24 per cent of permanent employees believe they are paid what they are worth, and half have looked for a better-paid role because of the cost of living. Women in permanent roles earn £8,721 a year less than men, a 12.2 per cent gap.
The junior numbers in the table above are London averages for 2026: a junior copywriter at £27,000, a junior creative team at £34,000 each, an account executive at £30,000, a media planner at £35,000, a junior strategist at £42,000. The IPA runs its own annual salary survey across more than 300 roles, but publishes it to member agencies rather than to candidates, so Major Players is the number you can actually cite in a negotiation.
Build a portfolio of eight to twelve campaign ideas, ideally with an art director partner, through a school such as SCA, Shift or Brixton, or on your own using New Blood briefs. Then get it critiqued by working creatives until a placement turns into a job.
None are mandatory. A degree helps for most graduate schemes, a Level 3 apprenticeship replaces it for many roles, and the IPA Foundation Certificate is the qualification agencies most often give new joiners.
Careers sites quote £22,000 to £30,000 for entry-level roles nationally. Major Players’ 2026 London averages are £30,000 for an account executive, £27,000 for a junior copywriter and £35,000 for a media planner.
It is a shrinking industry with slow pay growth and a narrowing entry level, and it remains one of the few places that pays people to have ideas for a living. The census numbers say be clear-eyed; they do not say stay away.
He plans, buys and reviews advertising for a living, and helps score campaigns on the site against the same five Crown Score criteria alongside other authors and contributors.
A character you invent is a freehold asset; a celebrity is a rental. The evidence on fluent devices, the twelve points of share of voice most brands leave on the table, and the mascots that failed.
Distinctiveness, brand linkage, longevity and truth. Four tests that separate a slogan from a positioning statement, with the lines that passed and the famous ones that were thrown away.
A track can carry a film, move a record to number one and date a campaign inside a quarter. What sync and master licences actually cover, roughly what they cost, and where brands get burned.