Which country has the best digital advertisers?
Most would say the ad agencies in the United States have cornered the market on digital advertising skills. Or France. Or the UK.
But they’d be wrong.
In a first release, OMCP is sharing digital marketing skill levels by region as derived from a subset of exams served to thousands of candidates over the last 12 months. OMCP is an independent industry association that verifies digital marketing hard skills via online exams. Certification is awarded by verification of experience, education, exam scores, and training from over 900 providers.
The overall results are first by country and then by US time zone. OMCP has already published the overall digital marketing skills and SEO skills by region. We will add Content Marketing, Social Medial Marketing, Digital Analytics, Marketing Automation, Mobile Marketing and Conversion Rate Optimization over the next weeks. Follow OMCP on Twitter to know when the new data is posted. Find the methods and sample size and access to the data here and conditions of use at the end of the post.
Digital Advertising Skills by Country
Turkey takes the lead in digital advertising scores with a country-wide average of 93.4%
Spain ranks second worldwide with the Netherlands earning the bronze medal for digital advertising skills. The United States ranks 12th in digital advertising skills with some room to improve. The OMCA digital marketing exams for this data cover the concepts of targeting, segmentation, retargeting, ad types, keyword match types, quality score components, digital analytics, call to action, budgeting, reporting, and ad and landing page congruency. OMCP competencies include concepts required for proficiency in Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft Advertising, display and search networks with leading market share, but the exams avoid testing for features specific to only one platform.
| Rank | Location | Digital Advertising Skills by Average Score |
| 1 | Turkey | 93.4 |
| 2 | Spain | 91.3 |
| 3 | Netherlands | 89.8 |
| 4 | Italy | 88 |
| 5 | France | 87.2 |
| 6 | Poland | 86.7 |
| 7 | Singapore | 86.5 |
| 8 | Japan | 83.5 |
| 9 | Switzerland | 83.4 |
| 10 | Colombia | 82.4 |
| 11 | United States | 79.1 |
| 12 | Germany | 79.1 |
Digital Advertising Skills by United States Time Zones (aka East Coast vs West Coast)
Once again we see the Eastern US time zone producing higher digital advertising skills coming in at 82.7% average score on the OMCA exams, closely followed by US Central at 81.5%, Hawaii at 79.4%. US Pacific and Mountain trail significantly at 72.9% and 70.4% respectively showing signs that some digital marketing training could help boost these scores.
Methods and Sample Size
This data was derived from 1,103 exam instances specifically from a subset of OMCA Practice Exams served over 12 months trailing the date of publication. To protect the privacy of candidates, we omitted a high number of exams that could suggest the performance of a team or a college class undergoing digital marketing readiness testing in a specific region. So for example, if a group of 400 staff from an agency office in Singapore all took the exam, we would eliminate those since, conceivably, someone could derive insights about that team from the reported numbers in that region. This is also why we do not report the number of exams per region, however a region must have at least 10 ‘individual’ (non team) instances to be ranked and then we only included the top 20 regions.
These results do not reflect or include the OMCP Practice Exams, the OMCA Certification Exams or the OMCP Certification exams. The OMCA practice exams serve 24 items, 2-3 per discipline, and the items do not regularly rotate. The items test to the OMCA competencies which verify a concept and component level understanding of the primary digital marketing disciplines. OMCA certification is intended for those who manage marketing teams/programs or must communicate digital marketing concepts. The OMCP exams test for implementation-level skills and are not included in this data.
The location data is derived from the IP address as reported by queries to http://www.geoplugin.net and can be flawed.
Meant to be Fun and Constructive
This data is intended to be used for analysis, reporting, and lighthearted constructive competition. Much like the international Olympics, we’ve seen that friendly competition to improve performance can help everyone. We’d love to see one region work to perform better than another! We predicted that it is unlikely that harm could come from this. But if we see it being used with malice towards any region, nationality, ethnic group, etc. OMCP will take it down and stop reporting it.
Use of the Data and Attribution
You may use the data if you attribute any use to OMCP, with a link back to OMCP. Since the numbers will change, be sure to stay up to date on changes by following OMCP on twitter. Request access to the data tables here (Google Sheets Shared doc request).