5 must-know stats about the agency business: Datacenter Weekly

Ad Age Agency Report 2022

Agencies have come roaring back, with strong revenue growth across disciplines and record-high U.S. ad agency employment. Ad Age’s 78th annual Agency Report shows who’s on top and where the business is growing and going. Five key insights, courtesy of Ad Ad Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson:

1. U.S. agency revenue growth

+13.5%

2021 growth in revenue for agencies from all disciplines, fastest since 2000

2. U.S. ad agency jobs

213,400

Employment in February 2022, an all-time high

3. U.S. PR agency jobs

64,100

Employment in February 2022, an all-time high

4. Digital share of revenue

64%

Estimated 2021 share of U.S. agency revenue from digital work for agencies from all disciplines

5. Organic growth

+4.8% to 5.1%

Average forecast of 2022 worldwide growth for five top agency holding companies (WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, Interpublic, Dentsu)

Source: Ad Age Datacenter.

WPP and Interpublic report strong first quarters

“In its first quarter trading update,” Ad Age’s Judann Pollack reports, “WPP reported revenue growth of 6.7% to 3.1 billion pounds. On a ‘like for like’ basis excluding currency, acquisitions and divestitures, its revenue grew 8.1%.”

See also:  “WPP shakeup merges Essence with Mediacom, Mindshare with Neo,” from Ad Age’s Jack Neff.

Also just out:  “Interpublic Group of Cos reported first-quarter organic net revenue growth of 11.5% and raised its full-year revenue growth forecast,” Ad Age’s Brian Bonilla reports. “First-quarter organic net revenue grew 12.2% in the U.S. and 10.2% in international markets.”

Keep reading here for more about WPP’s first quarter.

Keep reading here for more about Interpublic’s first quarter.

Flashback:  “Publicis Groupe reports strong first quarter, boosted by media wins and Publicis Sapient,” from Ad Age’s Alexandra Jardine, April 14.

Facebook has a ‘data lineage’ problem

“Facebook is facing what it describes internally as a ‘tsunami’ of privacy regulations all over the world, which will force the company to dramatically change how it deals with users’ personal data,” reports Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai of Vice Motherboard. “And the ‘fundamental’ problem, the company admits, is that Facebook has no idea where all of its user data goes, or what it’s doing with it, according to a leaked internal document obtained by Motherboard.”

Essential context:  “Even Facebook’s own engineers admit that they are struggling to make sense and keep track of where user data goes once it’s inside Facebook’s systems, according to the document,” Franceschi-Bicchierai writes. “This problem inside Facebook is known as ‘data lineage.’”

Keep reading here.

The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter.

Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee.

This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.