In which revenue band does which ad agency lie? It’s an important question and one that isn’t entirely clear.
Many ad agencies don’t reveal South African revenue figures (although listed groups such as WPP might reveal aggregated figures for the region or the network, often they don’t break down revenue by agency brands). AdReview and AdFocus both publish annual charts that contain revenue bands and try to answer the question of which agencies are the biggest revenue spinners.
Most agencies are willing to reveal publicly approximate revenue bands for their businesses; this makes for inexact science but gives an indication of where agencies are in terms of revenue.
Even calculating revenue can be difficult as different agencies take different views on what constitutes revenue and what should be included in this figure. (MarkLives encourages agencies to report revenue as opposed to billings: Billings is the amount of client money that flows through an agency to media, production houses and the like — what you can touch but you can’t keep = billings. Revenue is the money agencies get to keep. This is the number we are looking for.)
2013/2014 information
Agencies listed below are included based upon publicly available revenue bands in 2013/2014, sourced from places such as AdFocus and AdReview. Revenue bands for agency brands listed with an asterisk (*) were confirmed individually with agency management. It gives a relative overview of the dominant positions international holding companies enjoy in the SA agency landscape.
The information provided by agencies is impossible to audit and MarkLives accepts such information in good faith.
R250+ million revenue band |
|
Agency name |
Group |
| *The Creative Counsel | independent |
R150–220m |
|
| *FCB Joburg | IPG |
| Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg | WPP |
| *Aqua Group | WPP |
R125–150m |
|
| Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town | WPP |
| *JWT South Africa | WPP |
| *Y&R Johannesburg | WPP |
| Havas Worldwide | Havas |
| *Native VML | WPP |
R100–125m |
|
| *Volcano/Grey South Africa | WPP |
| *TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg | Omnicom |
| *Joe Public | independent |
| *M&C Saatchi Abel | M&C Saatchi |
| Quirk | WPP |
| *The Jupiter Drawing Room Johannesburg | WPP |
R70–100m |
|
| *DDB South Africa | Omnicom |
| Exp | WPP |
| *Gloo | Kagiso |
| *The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town | WPP owns 49% |
| *TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Durban | Omnicom |
| *Ireland/Davenport | WPP |
| MetropolitanRepublic | WPP |
| *FoxP2 Group | independent |
| *King James Group | independent |
| *Lowe + Partners | IPG |
R50–70m |
|
| *Mortimer Harvey | independent |
| *Saatchi & Saatchi Brandsrock | Publicis |
| *Net#work BBDO | Omnicom |
| *Hamiltons Advertising | independent |
| *99c | independent |
| *The Hardy Boys | WPP |
R30–50m |
|
| *34 | independent |
| *BlackRiver FC | WPP |
| *140 BBDO | Omnicom |
| *OwenKessel Leo Burnett | Publicis |
| *Promise Group | independent |
Note: figures are for 2013/2014. Revenue bands for agency brands listed with an asterisk (*) were confirmed individually with agency management.
Not listed? Want to make a correction?
Contact us with your revenue band for inclusion.
