I’ve had this role for about a year and a half now as a Media Planner. I’m at a boutique agency, where things can get pretty messy and there’s definitely some disorganization. I got put onto a MESSY account, where I’m still cleaning up the old team’s messes from late 2025/early 2026.
I feel overworked and underpaid. Wondering if the grass really is greener on the other side, aka Holding Cos with way more structure and organization (clock me if I’m wrong).
I don’t know if I should be looking for Media Planning roles specifically for my next step. I get anxious as to how client-facing I am on the daily, that makes me feel like all the eyes are on me and I can’t ever make any mistakes.
Is it truly fulfilling to be less client-facing, and more in tune with backend data, like analytics, or programmatic?
Since my agency is small, we touch every aspect of planning, all the way from finance, planning itself, analytics and reporting, to optimization. I feel lost trying to juggle everything at once; and I’m not able to focus my full attention on one matter because a client emergency always pops up.
I desperately want to stay in the advertising world. I love it. But my feelings of anxiousness and feeling overworked are too much now, and if this continues for a while then I need to leave this boutique agency, to have a better work life balance.
Any and all genuine advise is appreciated here, thanks.