It’s that time when we tot up adland’s winners and losers and one measure is media billings, gathered by Nielsen. As any creative agency that doesn’t do particularly well will tell you, they’re not a true reflection of performance for a number of reasons, one being that much agency work doesn’t appear in mainstream media these days (websites for example) and agencies aren’t paid according to media billings any more (bet they wish they were).
Income figures are not available though, at least from everyone. And, as they use different time periods, it’s apples and pears anyway.
It’s also clearly the case that one big billing account – usually a retailer – can make or break billings table performance. AMV BBDO has Sainsbury’s (below), VCCP Asda. Tesco has yet to kick in fully at BBH while adam&eveDDB’s retail trio – John Lewis, Harvey Nichols and Waitrose – are not spenders on that scale. WCRS has B&Q and also the lion’s share of Sky, the UK’s biggest advertiser.
Do retailer billings fully credit the production agencies, like Tag, they all use? Doubtful.
But it’s an interesting list all the same. Long time billings leader AMV BBDO, on £535m, more than double its nearest rival WCRS, seems to be playing on a different pitch to its rivals.
Creative Agency Expenditure
Grand Total £6.5bn
(Direct-In House £837m)
(To Be Advised £584m)
1/AMV BBDO £535m
2/WCRS £248m
3/VCCP £243m
4/McCann £232m
5/RKCR/Y&R £228m
6/Leo Burnett £225m
7/BBH £220m
8/adam&eveDDB £213m
9/Publicis £198m
10/Grey £186m
11/Havas Worldwide £173m
12/CHI & Partners £157m
13/J Walter Thompson £154m
14/DLKW Lowe £153m
15/Mother £152m
16/Ogilvy & Mather £143m
17/Saatchi & Saatchi £137m
18/Krow Communications £126m
19/TBWA London £123m
20/M&C Saatchi £90m
21/FCB Inferno Inferno £84m
(Not Allocated £81m)
22/Karmarama £73m
23/Fallon £70m
24/St Lukes £57m
25/Wieden & Kennedy £52m