Digiday+ Research: Agency, publisher return-to-work plans trending away from full-time office presence

The header image shows a person working on a computer.

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 →

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to upend traditional work patterns a full two years after it began, and the Great Resignation recasts the ranks for employees across media, marketing and advertising technology sectors, agencies, for one, are settling into to a hybrid future.

A Digiday+ Research survey in February of agency and publishing execs found that 40% of the 95 agency professional respondents said their employers will never return to full-time, in-person work schedules. Less than one in 10 have physically returned to work full time.

And on the publisher side, 30% of 127 publishing professional respondents said their employers will never return to full-time, in-person work schedules. As with agencies, less than one in 10 have returned to fill-time, in-person work.

More in Media

Forbes tests a creator-led audience play to grow off-platform reach 

Forbes is yet another publisher tapping creators and their audiences to drive off-platform growth – with a slightly different structure.

How Lipton Ice Tea is using local creators instead of building in-house social teams 

Lipton worked with Billion Dollar Boy to activate local creators across six different markets; a new approach to global marketing

How a German publisher JV is turning LLM visibility into a premium brand buy

Germany’s BCN, the joint-venture commercial arm of three major publishing houses – Hubert Burda Media, Funke and Klambt – is rolling out a commercial product that helps brands get properly surfaced and described inside ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI assistants, not just on traditional search results pages.