Part of Omnicom, OMD’s global billings were $21.3bn with Mindshare second on $20.8bn and Carat completing the top three with $15.5bn according to the latest figures from COMvergence’s global billings ranking report based on final 2020 media agency and group billings and including digital spend.
At the agency group level WPP’s GroupM is the global leader with 15.5% of the industry market share, which is the equivalent of $53.1bn in global billings, while Publicis Media $36.6bn in second and Omnicom completing the top three with $33.5bn.
As to be expected and as a result of the pandemic all of the major agency networks have posted a negative global growth rate for 2020 in comparison to 2019, ranging from -6% to -7% for Mindshare, Havas Media and dentsu X to -18% for Carat and Essence. It means the average growth rate when comparing 2020 to 2019 among the 19 media agency networks is –10.5%.
The same applies to the big six media agency groups with negative growth rates ranging from -6.1% for Havas Media Group to -15.4% for dentsu international.
Unsurprisingly when looking at digital media billings on their own there was growth and they represented on average 39% of media agency networks’ total billings (vs. 36% in 2019), Broken down this ranged from 31% for Zenith to 63% for Essence. Variations are less significant at a group level as the average digital share ranges from 36% for Havas Media Group to 42% for GroupM.
In terms of independent agencies the report discovered the 60 largest independents on the planet represented a total billings figure of $20bn (or 10% of the total billings controlled by all agencies assessed globally). Of these Horizon Media (US) is by far the largest worldwide with its 2020 billings of $7.2bn, which is around a third of the independent total billings.
The total estimated billings 2020 handled by the media agency networks (including standalone/dedicated client units and agencies, operated by the big six holding companies) as well as the major independent agencies reached about $196bn across 45 markets [excluding Brazil] representing 95% of the global media investments covered by COMvergence in its year-end report..
It also stands for 57% of the global net media spend that COMvergence estimates at $343bn in 2020 (vs. $370 in 2019; -7.3%). The remaining 43% being handled by smaller independent media agencies, digital specialised agencies, Japanese and Chinese local advertising agencies, or in-house units operated by the advertisers (especially in the digital area)
Regionally it means the $343bn is broken down by region as follows:
- North America 38%
- APAC 34%
- EMEA 26%
- Latin America 2%
For more information check out COMvergence here.
