New business remains resilient despite decrease of 10% in H1 2020

The holding companies might be losing as much as 23% of their revenue year-on-year, but new business has remained relatively resilient through 2020. In the first half of 2020, according to independent marketing consultancy R3, total New Business revenue decreased 10% globally – but creative agencies are having to find ways to do more with less.

Revenue from creative new business wins decreased more than 17% in the period of January to June 2020 with 2% less reviews. Meanwhile, media agencies experienced a slight increase in revenue of almost 4% from new business with 2% more total reviews than 2019.

“Marketers are on the lookout for agencies who can innovate within budgets,” says Greg Paull, Co-founder & Principal at R3. “The growing pressure of the “New Normal” in the review process means that delivering ROI remains top of mind.”

WPP dominates global creative new business wins with VMLY&R, Wunderman Thompson and Ogilvy in the top four agencies. The holding company also leads media new business wins with Mindshare generating the most revenue from wins and MediaCom in third place. Omnicom’s OMD and PHD share the media leaderboard in second and fourth place. 

Accenture delivered the highest percentage of revenue growth (2%) in new business won in H1 2020, outperforming WPP, who leads in total revenue and number of wins. Accenture Interactive’s Droga5 ranks second in creative new business globally, and first in the US, having won accounts for Allstate and The Hershey Company.

Scroll to Top