What an Ad Agency Is, and How a Junior Actually Gets In

If you are asking what an ad agency is, the short answer is that it is a business that takes a client's brief, decides what the advertising should say, produces it and places it where the audience will see it, then answers for how it performed. In 2026 that definition has to include the media and data teams that decide where the budget goes, which is why so many ad agencies are as much performance shops as creative studios. The harder question, and the one this article spends most of its length on, is how a person with no portfolio and no network gets a first conversation with any of them.

• An ad agency is defined by four jobs: strategy, creative, media buying and measurement. A shop that does only creative is a creative agency; one that does only media is a media agency.
• Entry-level access has tightened. OUTSIDE IN, a Sydney agency, cites 1% of advertised roles in Australian digital advertising as entry level, and 49% of roles asking for more than six years of experience.
• The practical way in is to pick one of six functions and bring proof of work, because agencies hire against a craft before they hire against a title.
• Mentoring programmes remove the application step and replace it with a half hour of advice. That is useful for a candidate and cheap for an agency.

What does ad agency mean in 2026?

The word covers several kinds of company that used to be easier to tell apart. Most people searching for ad agencies are looking at a list of one of these five:

The distinguishing question is not creative versus media but who owns the number. A traditional agency is briefed on a message and judged on the work. A performance house among digital agencies is briefed on a target and judged on cost per lead or revenue. Both call themselves agencies, and the brief you write will decide which one you need.

Most ad agencies in Singapore now sit somewhere between those two models, because clients want the campaign and the cost per lead from the same brief. Ask any shortlisted agency which metric its monthly report leads with, and you will know quickly where it sits.

Why are entry-level roles so scarce?

The numbers in this space are not flattering. According to IAB Australia's 2026 Digital Advertising and Ad Tech Industry Talent Review, cited on OUTSIDE IN's This Way In page, entry-level positions accounted for just 1% of advertised vacancies in the sector, while 49% of open roles asked for more than six years' experience. Those figures describe Australian digital advertising, and the source is the 2026 edition of the review, so read them as that market's picture rather than a claim about every agency market.

For an agency hiring manager, the arithmetic is easy to explain. A junior needs supervision, and supervision costs senior hours that could go to a client. When budgets are tight, the safe hire is the person who has already run a campaign. That leaves the loop everyone in the industry can describe and nobody finds easy to break: you cannot get experience without a job, and you cannot get the job without experience.

That matters to marketers as well as to candidates. An industry that hires only from the middle of the experience curve stops producing people who know how a full funnel works, and the shortage of people who can read a campaign and a creative brief together shows up later in the work. For the buyer of agency services, it is also a reason to ask who will actually work on the account, since the senior people are the ones being hired at scale.

Working with digital agencies brings the same question into the pitch. A team with a junior who handles reporting and a senior who sets strategy will show you a different result from a team where every name on the deck is senior and none of them stay on the account after the pitch.

What does a free mentoring session actually give you?

OUTSIDE IN, the creative-founded Sydney agency that launched the This Way In programme, approached the problem from a different angle. The offer is a free half hour with members of its creative leadership team, booked online, with no agenda, no application and no polished portfolio required. Each week the leadership team takes the sessions, subject to availability.

Bookable slots are either remote or at a desk in the agency. The sessions are run by the agency's founders Grace Leat, Lucie de La Chaise and Jacque Kelly, and Creative Partner Wez Hawes. In practice the participant can bring a portfolio for a critique, an idea they are stuck on, or a question about whether to go agency side or client side.

What the programme does not do is offer a job. Its own framing is that the agency cannot hire an army of juniors, and that the time is offered as advice rather than recruitment. Read it as a shortcut to feedback from people who have hired from hundreds of portfolios, not as an interview you can turn up to unprepared.

How do you choose a function before you apply?

The mistake most juniors make is applying to "an agency" rather than to a craft. Agencies are organised by function, and each function asks for a different piece of evidence.

1. Consulting or client service. You are the person who takes the brief and holds the client relationship. The evidence is how you explain a business problem in plain language, so bring a short written analysis of a brand you use.
2. Strategy. You decide what the advertising should say and why. The evidence is a point of view with a reason behind it, not a mood board.
3. Creative. Copy or art direction. The evidence is a portfolio with a handful of finished ideas rather than a stack of half-thought ones.
4. Media and paid performance. You decide where the budget goes. The evidence is a small campaign you ran, even with a few hundred dollars of your own money, with the account structure and results.
5. Data and analytics. You measure what happened. The evidence is a dashboard or a piece of analysis that answers a question someone actually asked.
6. Production, web and technology. You build the assets and the pages. The evidence is a site you shipped, a reel you edited, or a page that converts.

Two of these functions are harder to walk into cold. Consulting and strategy ask for judgement that usually comes after some time on a craft, and the roles tend to be filled from inside. Media, production and data are more open to a self-taught candidate who can show work.

The rule that follows from that is simple: a candidate with no network starts with media, data or production, where the evidence is a thing you can build or run on your own. Move toward consulting or strategy once you can show judgement on real decisions, because that is the thing those roles are judged on and a portfolio of finished work is the usual way to show it.

Do you need a formal graduate programme?

No, and this is where candidates overestimate what agencies can offer. A graduate scheme is a recruitment programme with a fixed intake, and many independent shops do not run one. OUTSIDE IN says so directly: supporting the next generation does not require a formal graduate programme or a new recruitment budget, and sometimes it starts with a conversation.

That leaves the candidate with a short list of moves that work without a scheme in place. Email a specific person in the function you want, with one piece of work attached and one question inside it. Ask for a portfolio review rather than a job. Take the critique, act on it, and come back with the revision. The second conversation is usually easier than the first, because you now have a reason to be in touch.

The advice does not suit everyone. If you already have a network, a placement or a family contact in the industry, the work of making a first introduction is largely done, and your time is better spent on the craft and on applying through the usual channels. It also suits a candidate who can name a function better than it suits one who is still deciding, because a vague request for advice gets a vague answer.

Marketers sometimes ask the same question in reverse: how do I choose an ad agencies partner that will train people rather than churn them? Watch how the agency talks about the people on your account. An agency that names the team and the function behind each deliverable is telling you something about how it staffs the work.

What is the Topkee view on hiring and team structure?

At Topkee, the question of how a junior enters an agency has a structural answer rather than a programme one. Topkee was founded in Hong Kong in 2010 and has built 16 years of performance marketing experience across paid media, data and conversion, with 8 offices and 3,000+ client cases today. Its Singapore operation has been on the ground since October 2024, and the company became a Google Premier Partner in 2016.

Topkee Media, the group's digital marketing and marketing-technology brand, runs six in-house teams: consulting, technology development, graphic creative, video creative, data analysis and web production. Consultants set the approach, then a delivery team is assembled flexibly around each client's performance marketing plan, with standardised processes protecting service quality and the promised return. The careers side of the business states that talent is the foundation of the business and that individual development sits alongside the team's performance, which in practice means a candidate should ask about onboarding, review cycles and progression rather than wait to be told.

For an early-career reader, the useful part of that structure is the naming of the crafts. The functions at Topkee match the six listed above, and the published material says nothing about junior job titles, headcount or a graduate intake. A candidate who wants to join a company of this shape should apply to a function and show proof of work for it.

Thinking about where a brand's budget should go sits on the marketing side of the same table. The AI-powered Google Ads service for immersive and sustainable growth is one place to see how paid search is planned against revenue rather than clicks, and it helps a reader understand the kind of brief a media team is actually handed.

What should you do next?

If you are hiring, the next step is to ask whether the brief is written for the work you need. A brand that wants a message buys creative; a brand that needs a measurable return on spend should write a brief with a target cost per lead and a definition of what counts as a sale. The proactive demand generation service for performance marketing growth sets out how that work is structured from the first click onwards, which is a reasonable reference point for comparing an agency's proposal against your own funnel.

If you are the candidate, the next step is smaller and more concrete. Pick one function this week, produce one piece of evidence for it, and send it to one person who works in that function, asking for a critique rather than a job.

Whichever side of the brief you are on, comparing digital agencies on the same two questions works: who does the work, and which number the report leads with. Those answers predict the relationship better than a list of awards.

FAQ

What is an ad agency in simple terms?

A company that plans, creates and buys advertising on behalf of brands, and is paid for that work. Most agencies now add media buying or measurement to the creative side, which is why the term covers shops with very different internal teams.

What is the difference between an advertising agency and a digital agency?

An advertising agency traditionally covers brand and campaign work, while a digital agency works on online channels such as paid search or paid social. Many agencies now do both, so the brief and the reported metric tell you more than the label.

Do ad agencies hire people with no experience?

Some do, but the openings are few. OUTSIDE IN's figures put entry-level roles at 1% of advertised vacancies in Australian digital advertising, with 49% of roles asking for more than six years of experience. The realistic route is a function-specific portfolio and a direct conversation.

How do you get a first meeting with an agency?

Ask for advice rather than a job, name a person in the function you want, and attach one piece of work with a specific question about it. Programmes such as This Way In formalise that half hour, but a short, specific email to one person still works.

Is a free mentoring session worth taking?

Yes, if you arrive with something to discuss. The value is feedback from people who hire, and the cost to you is the half hour. It is not an interview, and treating it as one usually wastes the session.

Sources

1. Lynchy, "Sydney independent agency OUTSIDE IN opens the door for the next generation of industry talent", Campaign Brief, 2026-11-05. https://campaignbrief.com/indie-agency-outside-in-opens-the-door-for-the-next-generation-of-industry-talent/
2. "This Way In: Free Advertising Mentoring", OUTSIDE IN, no publish date. https://www.outsidein.agency/this-way-in
3. "Google & Meta Ads Agency in Singapore | Lead Gen | Topkee", Topkee, no publish date. https://www.topkee.com.sg/