Dive Brief:

• With an estimated $22.5 billion in total billings and a 1.6% growth rate, OMD remained the top media agency in terms of billings – including digital media spending — for 2022, according to a report from COMvergence that covers the 2022 calendar year.
• At the group level, WPP’s GroupM is the global leader, with a 15.9% market share and $63.9 in global billings (a 7.1% growth over 2022). Publicis Media is second with $45.7 billion in billings (8.5% growth) and Omnicom Media Group was third with $38.3 billion in billings (up 8.2%).
• The report does not account for the merger of Essence and MediaCom which became effective in January 2023. Based on their 2022 billings, the combined company, now called EssenceMediaCom, will likely become the leading media agency in 2023.

Dive Insight:

For 2022, COMvergence estimated overall net media spending of $401 billion, which represents a 6.4% increase from 2021’s $377 billion across 46 markets. About 60% of that total is handled by large global media agency networks. The remaining 40% is handled by smaller independent media and digital agencies, Chinese, Japanese and South Korean local advertising agencies and in-house media teams.

The portion managed by major agency networks owned by the Big Six media holding and major independent media agencies totaled $253 billion in 2022. Combined they represent 96% of the global media investments studied by COMvergence and represented an 8% overall growth over 2021. After OMD, the report ranked Group M’s Mindshare as the second largest media agency with $22 billion (down 1.2%) and MediaCom was third with total billings of $20 billion (up 3.4%).

Of that total $253 billion, COMvergence estimated 48% – $121 billion – went toward digital media, up from 43% in 2021 and 39% in 2020. The ratio of traditional to digital media spending varied widely among the media agency networks, with digital accounting for only 39% of billings at Initiative to 63% at Essence.

The differences were less significant at the group level, where the digital ranged from 44% for Havas Media Network to 51% for OMG. Among the Big Six holding companies, digital media expenditures grew 16% year-over-year to reach $102.3 billion. Comparatively, offline media spending fell 1% to $110.9 billion.

COMvergence’s study also covers 107 independent local media agencies, representing a total of $25.5 billion in 2022 (about 11% of the total billings measured by the company). Horizon Media in the U.S. is the largest independent media agency with more than $7.7 billion in 2022 billings. The media network of Local Planet, which includes Horizon, Canada’s Plus Company, Germany’s Pilot, Italy’s Media Italia, and Span’s Zertem Group, was the largest independent agency network with 11.6 billion in 2022 billings. Mediaplus, which includes 16 locally owned agencies, generated total billings of $2.3 billion.

The report excluded billings from Russia, as all of the Big Six media agency networks and groups withdrew from the country and ceded ownership of the agencies to local management teams as a consequence of the Ukraine war.