Retail giants like Amazon and Walmart are gunning to build big ad businesses — putting them in direct competition with other tech and ad companies for talent.
These retailers need people with deep experience working with advertisers and are finding them by raiding tech as well as traditional media and advertising companies.
Amazon recently listed more than 2,800 advertising jobs on its site while Walmart's advertising arm, Walmart Connect, had nearly 1,000 openings. And Instacart has largely built its ad business through hiring former Meta and Amazon specialists.
"There is a talent war going on where everyone is trying to recruit and staff these positions," Seth Dallaire, EVP, and chief revenue officer at Walmart, recently told Insider. "Candidly, I can't hire fast enough."
Workplace intelligence platform Revelio Labs, drawing from public employment data, looked at the movement of people in advertising roles from January 2021 to the end of July, specifically zeroing in on companies that are building e-commerce ad behemoths.
The biggest hirers were Walmart, Amazon, where advertising headcount has grown roughly fourfold in the past two years, and Instacart, per Revelio Labs' data.
Walmart started building an ads business, Walmart Connect, in earnest in 2019 and has turned it into a $2 billion-plus revenue stream. It's hired 58 into ads roles in the January 2021-July time period, including 13 from Dallaire's old employer, Amazon.
Amazon started ramping up its advertising arm in a big way in 2017, and the business, at $31 billion and growing, is the third biggest behind Google and Facebook.
Also on a growth tear is Instacart, led by Facebook alum Fidji Simo, which has built an estimated $300 million ad business from scratch in two years.
Tech companies like Google and Facebook saw a number of departures as a result of the hiring binge.
Google saw 22 left, 12 of whom went to Amazon and the remainder going to Walmart and Instacart, according to the Revelio Labs data. Facebook lost 4 each to Amazon, Instacart, and Walmart. Of course, these numbers are small in comparison to the total headcount of companies like these, which have tens of thousands of employees.
Traditional media and advertising companies also saw employees jump ship for these newer, fast-growing, and high-paying opportunities. Publicis-owned ad agency Starcom saw 14 leave for Walmart. NBCUniversal lost 9 to Amazon.
To be sure, some people went the other way. Amazon lost 13 to Walmart and 7 to Instacart.
The companies mentioned declined to comment or didn't respond to requests for comment.
As more retailers staff up their advertising businesses, they're looking for people with strong advertising experience versus strong retail experience. Cara Pratt, SVP of Kroger Precision Marketing, recently told Insider she's looking for people with a deep understanding of how advertisers spend on brand building and awareness and who have relationships with big ad agencies.
"You need to make sure that you've got talent that understands the choices that national brand investment teams are making," she said.