Introducing Ad Age Agency Report 2023

The agency business delivered solid growth in 2022, but a closer look reveals sharp distinctions in how different agency disciplines performed.
 
Ad Age’s annual Agency Report ranks the world’s 25 biggest agency companies and breaks down the industry by discipline from ad agencies to promotion to media.

See the full Agency Report 2023

Read more: Ad Age's analysis of the agency business

Ad agency employment reached an all-time high in 2022, but the report finds caution signs for advertising employment in 2023.
 
Agency companies are working to control staff costs through various means including agency mergers and restructuring, shifting jobs to lower-cost countries and automation.

Agencies face headwinds of slowing growth in digital advertising and a potential recession.

Yet amid the warning signals, investors have been bullish. Shares in one of the world’s biggest agency companies last week reached an all-time high.

That in part reflects how agency companies are striving to move the business from creating ads to a bigger stage of creating change for marketers.

The Agency Report examines how agency companies are positioning themselves in the burgeoning field of business transformation, a wide-open sector that could help insulate agency companies from an advertising downturn and recession.
 
But the CEO of one top agency firm cautioned: “I don’t think anything in the world is recession-proof to be blunt.”

Want to dig deeper? Subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter to see expanded data on agencies available through the Datacenter links at AdAge.com/agencyreport2023. The expanded data include:

     • Ad Age Agency Family Trees 2023, with facts and figures on the world’s 25 biggest agency companies including profiles and agency holdings.
     • Expanded agency listings by discipline, downloadable in Excel, and listing of U.S. agencies from all disciplines.