India’s media and advertising global capability centres (GCCs) are shifting hiring toward artificial intelligence and analytics roles while reducing the share of execution-heavy functions as automation reshapes global media operations.
GCCs operated by multinational companies, including Dentsu, WPP, Netflix, among others, have not witnessed a structural hiring slowdown in the past year, but a “strategic recalibration”, according to staffing firm foundit.
Overall hiring growth in the sector rose 3% year-on-year in 2024, as global agency networks tightened costs and rationalised traditional execution-led roles, the firm said.
Roles such as campaign reporting executives, media trafficking executives, ad operations coordinators, creative adaptations designers, and entry-level data processing analysts have seen a decline in hiring share in 2025 compared with a year earlier.
According to the experts from staffing firms, job roles that are focused on reporting, trafficking, and low-complexity operations are being compressed as artificial intelligence systems take over routine tasks across media planning, content workflows, and advertising operations.
However, hiring momentum strengthened in 2025, rising 14% year-on-year, driven by enterprise-wide digital transformation and faster AI integration across media planning, analytics, and marketing technology systems.
The composition of the workforce has shifted sharply. In 2024, roles directly linked to AI, advanced analytics, and martech integration accounted for 21% of total GCC jobs. By 2025, that share had increased to 44%, a 23 percentage point rise within a year, foundit told Storyboard18.
And, in the past two months, hiring activity expanded 5%, though growth was selective rather than broad-based across these GCCs.
Demand increased for AI campaign optimisation specialists and AI-powered performance marketing strategists, each up 7%, while marketing data scientist roles rose 8%. Hiring for generative AI creative technologists grew 5% and customer data platform specialists 4%, the firm added.
India’s media and communication GCCs are evolving from back-end execution centres into AI-enabled orchestration hubs that design and manage automated systems supporting global campaign planning and performance management.