Data & Statistics March 2026 • Updated: 9 November 2026 • 14 min read

Digital marketing salaries 2026

Salary and rate data for digital marketing in the Netherlands, with a source link for every figure: CBS hourly wages per occupation, collective wage agreements, published salary surveys and freelance rate indexes. Where something is not publicly measured, we say so. Comparing with outsourcing? See our online marketing agency.

€33.00

median gross hourly wage, marketing, PR & sales advisers (NL, 2025)

Source: CBS, 2025

€67 / €105

freelance marketing & sales: offered vs asked per hour

Source: Freelance.nl, 2026

62%

average wage premium in job ads asking for AI skills (worldwide)

Source: PwC via Euronews, 2026

Ruud ten Have

Ruud ten Have

Ruud is a digital marketer with 10+ years of experience in online advertising and AI implementation. At Searchlab, he combines strategic thinking with hands-on AI tooling to deliver measurable results for businesses.

01 — Overview

Average digital marketing salaries

There is no official “digital marketing salary”. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) measures gross hourly wages per occupation group. The closest group, advisers in marketing, public relations and sales (it also includes sales representatives and account managers), earned a median of €33.00 per hour in 2025: 23% above the median for all employees (€26.90).

€33.00

advisers marketing, PR & sales (median per hour)

Source: CBS, 2025

€50.10

managers sales & marketing (median per hour)

Source: CBS, 2025

€27.30

graphic, web & multimedia designers (median per hour)

Source: CBS, 2025

€26.90

all employees in the Netherlands (median per hour)

Source: CBS, 2025

How fast pay is rising

  • The median hourly wage of marketing, PR and sales advisers rose from €30.40 (2024) to €33.00 (2025), +8.6%, versus +6.3% for all employees (calculated from CBS, 2025)
  • Managers in sales and marketing went from €46.40 to €50.10 per hour, +8.0% (calculated from CBS, 2025)
  • Since 2022 the median for marketing, PR and sales advisers rose 17% (€28.20 to €33.00) (calculated from CBS, 2025)
  • Collective (cao) wages rose 5.0% in 2025, 1.6% after inflation; in information and communication the rise was 7.4%, the highest of all industries (CBS, 2025)

The CBS hourly wage excludes holiday pay, year-end bonuses, performance pay and overtime. Dutch employees are entitled to at least 8% holiday pay on top of their gross annual salary (Rijksoverheid). CBS only publishes a wage for occupation groups with at least 30,000 employees, so there is no CBS wage for journalists (17,000 employees) or authors and linguists (11,000) (CBS, 2025).

Amounts from recruiters and surveys further down this page are labelled as such: they are not representative samples.

02 — By Role

Salaries by marketing role

CBS publishes the middle half of hourly wages per occupation group: 25% of employees earn less than the first amount, 25% more than the second. Salaries per specialism (SEA, content, social, email, CRO) are not publicly measured with a stated method; we removed our earlier estimates.

Advisers marketing, PR & sales

€24.70-43.10

per hour (P25-P75), median €33.00, 220,000 employees

Source: CBS, 2025

Managers sales & marketing

€37.80-63.50

per hour (P25-P75), median €50.10, 57,000 employees

Source: CBS, 2025

Graphic & web designers

€21.10-35.90

per hour (P25-P75), median €27.30, 44,000 employees

Source: CBS, 2025

ICT specialists

€28.60-44.70

per hour (P25-P75), median €36.00, 424,000 employees

Source: CBS, 2025

Systems analysts & ICT advisers

€30.40-48.20

per hour (P25-P75), median €39.40

Source: CBS, 2025

Commercial occupations (all)

€16.80-31.20

per hour (P25-P75), median €20.40

Source: CBS, 2025

Recruiter benchmarks (annual, including holiday pay)

  • Marketing Manager: €80,000-95,000 (mid-level) and €95,000-110,000 (senior) gross per year (Michael Page, 2026)
  • Marketing Director: €100,000-120,000 (mid-level) and €120,000+ (senior) (Michael Page, 2026)
  • Brand Manager and Product Manager: €70,000-85,000 (mid-level) and €85,000-100,000 (senior) (Michael Page, 2026)

Michael Page is a recruitment agency; for Sales & Marketing it reports 22,727 candidates and 474 interviews. Its ranges are a recruiter benchmark, not averages for the Dutch market.

03 — Experience Level

Salaries by experience level

No public source measures marketing pay by years of experience across all roles. The closest is a 2025 survey by SE Ranking among 171 SEO professionals (95% in the Netherlands). It reports monthly pay bands, without stating gross or net or full-time.

Level Most common monthly pay band Share of respondents in that band
Junior €2,000-3,000 75%
Mid-level €3,000-4,000 69%
Senior €4,000-5,000 36%
Lead €4,000-5,000 40%
Head of SEO €5,000-10,000 71%

Source: SE Ranking, 2025

CBS data gives a second view of the spread within one occupation: among marketing, PR and sales advisers the lowest quarter earns up to €24.70 per hour and the highest quarter at least €43.10 (CBS, 2025). Earlier figures on this page about salary jumps per career stage and a premium for “T-shaped” marketers had no traceable source and were removed.

04 — Freelance Rates

Freelance & hourly rates

Freelance.nl compares what clients offer with what freelancers ask, per field, based on all assignments and responses on its platform in Q1 2026. Rates exclude VAT.

€67

offered per hour, marketing & sales

Source: Freelance.nl, 2026

€105

asked per hour, marketing & sales

Source: Freelance.nl, 2026

€87 / €106

all fields: offered vs asked

Source: Freelance.nl, 2026

€92

average rate, self-employed communications adviser

Source: Knab, 2026

Field Offered (avg.) Asked (avg.) Change vs Q1 2025
Marketing & sales €67 €105 -2.8%
Communications €81 €103 -0.6%
All fields €87 €106 +2.4% (offered)

Source: Freelance.nl Freelance Tarief Index, 2026

  • Freelancers ask on average 21.8% more than clients offer, and the gap grows each year (Freelance.nl, 2026)
  • Offered rates rose 2.4% this year, the smallest increase in five years (3.7% a year earlier, 6.7% in 2023) (Freelance.nl, 2026)
  • Hybrid assignments pay the most: €90 offered, versus €83 on site and €71 fully remote (Freelance.nl, 2026)
  • 1 in 4 freelancers does not know what a market rate is in their field; 47% of freelancers negotiate often or always, against 70% of clients (Freelance.nl, 2026)
  • The average Dutch self-employed professional charges €83 per hour; communications advisers had average revenue of €100,174 and profit of €68,551 in 2025 (survey of 20,000+ self-employed) (Knab, 2026)
  • 66% of clients pay freelancers by the hour, 24% per project (Freelance.nl, 2026)

Noteworthy: in marketing & sales the gap between asked and offered rates is €38 per hour, twice the average gap of €19 across all fields. For companies that want AI expertise without hiring, an AI marketing agency can be an alternative.

Note: all rates above exclude 21% VAT (Belastingdienst). Earlier rate tables per specialism (up to €185 per hour) and the claim that 47% of marketers freelance had no traceable source and were removed.

05 — Agency vs In-house

Agency vs in-house salaries

Salary differences between agencies and in-house teams per role are not publicly measured. One survey of SEO professionals gives an indication.

46%+

of in-house SEOs earn over €4,000 per month

Source: SE Ranking, 2025

~25%

of agency SEOs earn over €4,000 per month

Source: SE Ranking, 2025

3.1 vs 2.6

stress score agency vs in-house (scale 1-5)

Source: SE Ranking, 2025

  • 62% of the 171 respondents work at an SEO or marketing agency, 36% in-house (SE Ranking, 2025)
  • 73.3% of the freelancers in the survey earn more than €5,000 per month (SE Ranking, 2025)
  • Freelancers report the lowest stress (2.4), agency staff the highest (3.1) (SE Ranking, 2025)

Earlier figures on this page (an in-house premium of 5-12% per role, faster promotion at agencies, profit sharing at 38% of agencies) had no traceable source and were removed.

06 — AI & Data Roles

AI & data roles in marketing

AI skills command a clear premium in job ads worldwide. There is no public Dutch measurement of the salary of an “AI marketing specialist”, so we do not publish one.

62%

average wage premium for AI skills in job ads (worldwide)

Source: PwC via Euronews, 2026

+69%

growth of jobs needing AI expertise since 2019, vs +9% overall

Source: PwC via Euronews, 2026

2.2%

of Dutch job titles on Indeed mention AI (Q1 2026)

Source: Indeed via Euronews, 2026

58%

of those Dutch AI job titles are outside tech

Source: Indeed via Euronews, 2026

  • The AI wage premium ranges from 118% in consumer markets to 16% in government roles; PwC analysed more than one billion job ads (PwC via Euronews, 2026)
  • Dutch employers posted 84 AI-labelled job titles in Q1 2026; Germany 288 (4.2% of titles), France 138 (3.3%), the UK 160 (2.7%), Spain 81 (2.3%) (Indeed via Euronews, 2026)
  • In the Netherlands, employers look for marketing and advertising specialists who use AI (Indeed via Euronews, 2026)
  • For reference: ICT specialists earned a median €36.00 per hour in 2025, systems analysts and ICT advisers €39.40 (CBS, 2025)

07 — Regional Differences

Salaries by region (Netherlands)

CBS does not publish wages per occupation by region, and marketing salaries per city are not publicly measured. For freelancers, Freelance.nl does publish the average offered hourly rate per province (all fields, Q1 2026).

€88

offered per hour in the Randstad

Source: Freelance.nl, 2026

€85

offered per hour outside the Randstad

Source: Freelance.nl, 2026

€91

Groningen: highest province

Source: Freelance.nl, 2026

€71

Limburg: lowest province

Source: Freelance.nl, 2026

Province Offered rate (avg.) vs Dutch average (€87)
Groningen €91 +4.6%
Utrecht €90 +3.4%
Friesland €90 +3.4%
Zuid-Holland €88 +1.1%
Noord-Holland €86 -1.1%
Noord-Brabant €86 -1.1%
Overijssel €86 -1.1%
Gelderland €85 -2.3%
Drenthe €83 -4.6%
Zeeland €79 -9.2%
Flevoland €78 -10.3%
Limburg €71 -18.4%
Belgium (for comparison) €77 -11.5%

Source: Freelance.nl Freelance Tarief Index, 2026

Earlier figures on this page (Amsterdam +12%, Eindhoven +9% per year, a shrinking regional gap) had no traceable source and were removed.

08 — Salaries vs Outsourcing

In-house salaries vs agency outsourcing

What does an employee cost on top of salary? Independent figures exist for labour costs, not for the price of a marketing agency.

€47.9

average labour cost per hour worked, Netherlands (2025)

Source: Eurostat, 2025

€34.9

EU average labour cost per hour (2025)

Source: Eurostat, 2025

24.8%

share of non-wage costs in EU labour costs

Source: Eurostat, 2025

8%

minimum holiday pay on top of gross salary

Source: Rijksoverheid

  • The Netherlands is among the three EU countries with the highest hourly labour costs; Luxembourg is highest (€56.8), Bulgaria lowest (€12.0) (Eurostat, 2025)
  • In the euro area, non-wage costs make up 25.6% of labour costs (Eurostat, 2025)
  • Hiring a freelancer instead: clients offer €87 per hour on average across all fields, €67 in marketing & sales (Freelance.nl, 2026)

We no longer publish a calculated cost of an in-house marketer versus an agency, or a percentage saving from outsourcing: there is no independent source for agency fees, and the earlier cost table on this page was not traceable.

10 — Key Takeaways

Key takeaways

The 10 most important verified figures on digital marketing pay in the Netherlands.

01

There is no official “marketing salary”: CBS measures hourly wages per occupation, excluding holiday pay and bonuses.

02

Marketing, PR & sales advisers earned a median €33.00 per hour in 2025, 23% above all employees (€26.90).

03

Managers sales & marketing earned a median €50.10 per hour; the middle half €37.80 to €63.50.

04

Hourly wages of marketing advisers rose 8.6% from 2024 to 2025, versus 6.3% for all employees.

05

Cao wage growth is slowing: 5.0% in 2025, 4.0% in Q3 2026 (information and communication: 3.1%).

06

Michael Page lists €80,000-95,000 for a mid-level marketing manager (recruiter benchmark, incl. holiday pay).

07

Freelance marketing & sales: clients offer €67 per hour, freelancers ask €105.

08

Offered freelance rates rose just 2.4%, the smallest increase in five years.

09

Job ads asking for AI skills pay a 62% premium on average worldwide (PwC).

10

Marketing & sales freelance assignments were 39% above last year in Q3 2026.

Sources & Methodology

Our sources

CBS StatLine: Werknemers; uurloon en beroep (2025)
CBS: Cao-lonen 2025
CBS: Cao-lonen Q3 2026
CBS: Labour market Q3 2026
CBS: Flexible work and self-employed
Michael Page: Salary Guide 2026 Netherlands
SE Ranking: SEO salary survey Netherlands (2025)
Freelance.nl: Freelance Markt Index Q2 2026
Freelance.nl: Freelance Markt Index Q3 2026
Knab: Zzp hourly rates 2026
Indeed Hiring Lab: pay transparency (2026)
PwC Global AI Jobs Barometer 2026 (via Euronews)
Indeed AI job titles (via Euronews, 2026)
Eurostat: Hourly labour costs (2025)
Rijksoverheid: holiday pay
Belastingdienst: VAT rates

CBS hourly wages are gross and exclude holiday pay, bonuses and overtime. Recruiter and survey amounts are labelled with their own definition. Freelance rates exclude 21% VAT. Every figure links to the source we opened; figures without a verifiable source were removed in November 2026.

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Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ: digital marketing salaries

What does a marketing manager earn in 2026?
There is no official salary figure for the job title. CBS measures hourly wages: managers in sales and marketing earned a median gross €50.10 per hour in 2025 (middle half €37.80 to €63.50), excluding holiday pay and bonuses. Recruiter Michael Page lists €80,000 to €95,000 gross per year for a mid-level marketing manager and €95,000 to €110,000 for a senior one, including holiday pay, as a recruiter benchmark.
What is an SEO specialist's salary in 2026?
There is no official figure for SEO specialists. In SE Ranking's 2025 survey of 171 SEO professionals (95% in the Netherlands), juniors most often earn €2,000 to €3,000 per month, mid-levels €3,000 to €4,000, seniors and leads €4,000 to €5,000 and heads of SEO €5,000 to €10,000 (gross or net not specified). CBS reports a median of €33.00 per hour in 2025 for the wider group of marketing, PR and sales advisers.
What does a freelance digital marketer charge per hour?
On Freelance.nl, clients in marketing and sales offered an average of €67 per hour in Q1 2026, while freelancers asked €105 (all fields: €87 offered, €106 asked). In Knab's 2026 survey, self-employed communications advisers charge €92 per hour on average, against €83 for all self-employed. All rates exclude 21% VAT.
Do you earn more at a marketing agency or in-house?
Salary differences per role between agencies and in-house teams are not publicly measured. In SE Ranking's 2025 survey of SEO professionals, more than 46% of in-house respondents earned over €4,000 per month, against about a quarter of agency staff. Agency staff also reported more stress (3.1 vs 2.6 on a scale of 1 to 5).
Is it cheaper to outsource marketing or build an in-house team?
No independent source compares the full cost of an in-house team with an agency. What is measured: an hour of work cost Dutch employers €47.9 on average in 2025 (Eurostat), and employees get at least 8% holiday pay on top of their gross salary. Freelance clients offer €87 per hour on average across all fields, €67 in marketing and sales (Freelance.nl, Q1 2026).

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