Digiday Research: Employees at indie agencies are happier than their holding company peers
![](https://digiday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/03/happy-workers.jpg?w=1030&h=579&crop=1)
This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →
Ask any agency employee how satisfied they are at work, and a litany of complaints is bound to come your way. There are plenty of reasons to grumble: The ad agency world tends to pay little (especially at junior levels), have very long hours and often feels unstable.
According to a new Digiday poll, just under half — 49% — of agency staffers say they’re happy at work. About 15% claim to be “extremely” happy, while 35% say they’re happy. About 17% said they’re unhappy. The rest were neutral.
That is less than the 54% of Americans who said they were “satisfied” with their jobs in an August 2019 Conference Board report.
The same poll last year found that 63% of agency professionals said they were happy.
Here’s where things get interesting: Those who said they worked at holding company-owned agencies were less likely to say they were happy than those at independent agencies. About 33% of them claimed to be happy, while a whopping 57% of those who worked at independent agencies said they were.
More in Marketing
![](https://digiday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2022/12/diverse-crowd.jpg?w=439&h=277&crop=1)
Hyve Group buys the Possible conference, and will add a meeting element to it in the future
Hyve Group, which owns such events as ShopTalk and FinTech Meetup, has agreed to purchase Beyond Ordinary Events, the organizing body behind Possible.
![](https://digiday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/05/tiktok-stage-digiday.gif?w=439&h=277&crop=1)
Agencies and marketers point to TikTok in the running to win ‘first real social Olympics’
The video platform is a crucial part of paid social plans this summer, say advertisers and agency execs.
![](https://digiday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/07/trump-harris-digiday.gif?w=439&h=277&crop=1)
Where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stand on big tech issues
The next U.S. president is going to have a tough job of reining in social media companies’ dominance and power enough to satisfy lawmakers and users, while still encouraging free speech, privacy and innovation.