Data mining and campaign customization drive an activity that is constantly evolving and with a wide range of learning opportunities Digital marketing has become an omnipresent career in Spain in recent years. In both public and private institutions, you can find a huge educational offer of degrees, master's degrees, diplomas and other specialized programs. This is because it is an increasingly sought-after profession in companies. According to data from the Telefónica Foundation, the demand for qualified profiles in digital marketing grew by almost 50% in 2023, which reflects "the rapid expansion and evolution of the sector." The experts consulted by EL PAÍS agree that digital marketing is a career that is evolving rapidly and that the skills that employers are looking for are increasingly varied. Skills in email marketing, Google Ads, search engine optimization (SEO), social media management, digital advertising, among many others, are now essential. These skills are crucial for companies to strengthen their presence in the digital environment and adapt to market needs. Channel adoption Santiago Hernández, CEO of the news portal PuroMarketing and head of Marketing Studies at the CEF-Udima group, explains that the main change in the sector has been the widespread adoption of digital channels. “Today, you cannot understand marketing without understanding the digital world. What we do is be where our audience is,” Hernández says by phone. Likewise, the data science revolution has also reached digital marketing. Borja López, director of Social Media at the Ernest agency, considers that this aspect is the new key in the world of digital commerce: “Data intelligence allows us to measure and optimize our actions in real time, creating attribution models to know which strategies are working and which are not.” This capacity for analysis and optimization in real time from data, according to López, is essential to generate profitable and effective results for companies. Hernández also says that data allows marketing strategies to be “identified and corrected” in ways that were previously impossible. “It used to be said that in marketing you squandered half of your budget, but you didn’t know which half. Thanks to data, today we can know which of those halves we are squandering and stop doing it, because we can optimize our work in real time,” explains the CEO of PuroMarketing. Key knowledge The director of Social Media at Ernest points out that access to data has led to personalization in digital advertising. “We now know that the way content is consumed varies enormously depending on the platform and the target audience. This allows us to create highly personalized advertising, adjusted to the context and preferences of the user, which was not so easy to achieve in the past,” says López. Fernanda Arnaiz, a 27-year-old young professional who works at the Aglaia Consulting agency in Barcelona, ​​stresses the importance of staying up to date in a rapidly changing field and developing the skills that companies are paying more attention to. “Companies evaluate factors such as experience in SEO and SEM (search engine marketing), having worked on Google Ads campaigns and copywriting,” Arnaiz explains over the phone. The artificial intelligence revolution has had a significant impact on digital marketing, according to Arnaiz. “It has impacted my way of working for the better. I can do my tasks in half the time I used to, I can research much faster,” he says. This sentiment is shared by many in the industry, who see AI as a powerful tool to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns. The CEO of PuroMarketing also believes that artificial intelligence is beginning to play an important role, especially in content creation, but he emphasizes that this technology should not “replace human creativity.”