Top agencies with highest billings in 2021
By Abimbola Mohammed
COMvergence, an independent and international research consultancy that provides analysis and benchmarking studies of advertising and media firms, has released the 2021 report of top agencies with the highest billings.
The report is released on a quarterly basis and highlights which media agencies won and retained the most business.
According to the analysis, 4,410 pitches were made between January and September 2021, with the total billion of $40.7 up 80% from 2020.
As in previous years, the U.S. accounted for about a third of the spend, with many reviews over $500 million including T-Mobile, FCA/Stellantis, Unilever, Walmart, Inspire Brands, McDonald’s, Meta, Google’s offline media and Eli Lilly.
The top agencies include:
Starcom, first due to its $2 billion Stellantis win, its $1.2 billion FCA retention and the McDonald’s win. The agency’s total new business value came to $3.7 billion, of which $1.8 billion came from retentions.
MediaCom came in second with $2.7 billion in new business, including $1.1 billion in retention. The agency’s two most notable wins include Coca-Cola’s $1.9 billion global account and Google’s offline media business.
OMD and Mindshare share the third place spot. OMD’s significant retentions included Crown Commercial Services in the U.K. and Daimler globally.
Mindshare’s retention included Unilever in some markets and Yili in China. Mindshare’s loss of Meta to Spark Foundry was not included in the COMvergence calculation, because the agency did not defend the business.
Top groups:
Publicis Media, GroupM and OMG At the group level, Publicis Media raked in new business totaling $6.95 billion, including $4.2 billion in net new billings.
WPP’s GroupM followed with $4.2 billion in net new billings. But, when excluding its retention, GroupM’s performance sinks to $1 billion- $3 billion below Publicis Media.
Omnicom’s OMG came in third with $2.3 billion in total retained billings. IPG’s Mediabrands followed closely behind, but notably, Mediabrands last year had the second largest net new business billings gain of the six groups, at $1.5 billion. Global pitches, higher retention With COMvergence and consolidation top of mind for marketers, local pitches were less dominant in 2021. Total local spend amounted to 58% of the total last year compared to 71% in 2020 and 73% in 2019.
Media agencies are more likely to retain their clients, according to the data. The average retention rate last year was 33%, up from 30% in 2020 and 25% in 2019. Starcom by far had the highest retention only once the line-of-n rate, tying down 75% of business last year. Among groups, GroupM and Publicis Media led the way, retaining 50% of accounts. Of total media spend reviewed in 2021, just 10% went to independent agencies. COMvergence categorizes an independent agency as any agency that sits outside the big six holding companies. Of those, Horizon Media led, with $638 million in spend.
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