Ahead of Advertiser’s Day, HINT analysts examined Yandex Wordstat data for the period from October 2025 to September 2026. The study covered 14 professional areas in advertising, marketing, and PR, including digital marketing, SMM, copywriting, media planning, and creative roles.

According to the study, the combined search volume for “digital marketer,” “targeted advertising specialist,” “advertising manager,” and “SMM specialist,” including the Latin-script spelling of SMM, fell by 36%, from 65,400 impressions in October 2025 to 41,800 in September 2026.

The sharpest decline was recorded for “digital marketer,” down 47%, from 11,800 to 6,200 impressions. Searches for “targeted advertising specialist” fell by 41%, from 17,700 to 10,400, while “advertising manager” declined by 39%, from 8,100 to 5,000. Search volume for “SMM specialist” in Cyrillic fell by 23%, while the Latin-script variant declined by 34%.

At the same time, searches for “AI marketer” increased by 35%, from 672 impressions in October 2025 to 907 in September 2026. This was the only query among those analyzed for month-to-month changes that showed an increase in search volume. Although the absolute figures remain significantly lower than those for traditional roles, interest in the use of AI in marketing is gradually growing.

Meanwhile, Russians continue to search for job opportunities in the advertising industry. During the period studied, the query “copywriter jobs” generated 4,900 impressions, “working as a copywriter” received 4,400, and “remote copywriter jobs” accounted for 3,100. Another 1,100 impressions came from the query “copywriter jobs with no experience.” Users are also interested in learning about the profession itself: the query “what is a copywriter” generated 11,200 impressions.

Interest in advertising jobs persists despite a significant decline in the number of vacancies. According to hh.ru, the number of active vacancies in the “Marketing, Advertising, PR” category fell by 32% in September 2026 compared with September 2025. Across Russia as a whole, the decline was 13%. At the same time, the number of active CVs in this professional category increased by 8% year over year.

As a result, competition for jobs increased by nearly 58%. In September 2025, there were 20.1 active CVs per active vacancy in marketing, advertising, and PR. By September 2026, that figure had risen to 31.7. This is approximately 3.7 times the national average of 8.5 CVs per vacancy. In terms of competition, the “Marketing, Advertising, PR” category ranked third among professional fields in Russia.

“The advertising market is changing faster than perceptions of the professions within it. Today, the boundaries between specializations are gradually blurring: SMM specialists need to understand analytics, marketers need to work with content, and PR managers need to be proficient in digital tools. The growing interest in AI in marketing also deserves particular attention, as new technologies are gradually becoming part of specialists’ everyday work. It is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to justify hiring someone for just one narrowly defined task. I believe that in the coming years, we will see further redistribution of responsibilities within teams and growing demand for professionals who can manage several areas and take responsibility for overall results,” says Alexandra Drobysheva, CEO of digital agency HINT.

Methodology

The study is based on Yandex Wordstat data covering all regions of Russia from October 2025 to September 2026, as well as publicly available hh.ru statistics for September 2025 and September 2026. Search queries across 14 professional areas in advertising, marketing, and PR were collected and manually grouped by topic: job titles, vacancies, training, salaries, responsibilities, and working conditions. Changes in the labor market were assessed using the number of active vacancies, active CVs, and the competition ratio.

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