The illegible scan above (click to enlarge) is from this week's Campaign magazine. It's their annual listing of the UK's top 50 agencies by income. The numbers are mostly for 2009, which is the most recent info that's publicly available. The table shows that W+K London has risen 8 places from number 20 to number 12. Our income grew by 23.4% year on year. Every other agency in the top 20 (other than Saatchi and Saatchi, which grew by 4%) saw a decline in income during that period and many agencies were badly hit by the recession, with a double digit decline. I was surprised to see that this shows us as being larger than agencies like Grey, Euro RSCG, CHI, TBWA and WCRS. I guess that's because UK listings tend to look at size by billings (ratecard UK media spend of accredited clients) whereas this table shows actual reported revenue. Using billings is a relic of the days when agencies made their money from media commission on 'above the line' advertising. These days looking at billings is pretty useless as an indicator of agency performance.
Given that this data is a year old now, it's a snapshot of a time already long gone the rankings for 2010 will no doubt be different again. But it's sobering to see just how brutal the 2009 recession was for the UK ad industry.
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