• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, March 9, 2021

OMD is the top-ranked global media agency network in the latest diagnostics report from media agency tracking firm RECMA. The Omnicom agency dethroned Dentsu’s Carat, which held the top spot for eight consecutive years.

Carat and UM were tied for second in the overall ranking for global networks. And as RECMA noted in its report, the competition is “fierce” among the top-3 ranked networks with just one-half of a "quali-share" point separating the three shops. (A Quali-share point is defined by RECMA as the ratio between an agency’s total points and the total score of the 17 global media agency networks that were assessed.)  

In the previous diagnostics report, issued last August, just one-half of a point also separated the top-3, when Carat was still on top and UM and OMD were tied for second place.

The in-depth assessment measures 19 different criteria including “vitality” metrics such as competitive pitch performance, client portfolio growth and awards as well as metrics evaluating “structure” including group-wide specialized resources, international coordination of staff, client relations and data and analytics expertise.

The report assesses 700 media agencies across 47 international markets and is widely used by advertisers and agencies to monitor performance within the industry. RECMA confirmed the top-3 ranked networks but most of the report remains available only to subscribers.

But RECMA did note that OMD has increased its market-share in part due to positive results across several markets notably in the USA, Italy, UK, Spain and Russia but also in smaller markets like Denmark, Finland, Romania, Indonesia, or Malaysia. “The agency has the best overall global score in ‘Structure’ … Notably, OMD has one of the best ‘Relationship Stability’ scores” among 17 international networks, “showing high loyalty among their clients.”

As for UM, RECMA said that the agency “steadily grew over the past year” while certain markets achieved “huge” performance gains. It cited Canada and the UK as two examples.

And the agency evaluator stressed that Carat, despite its slipping into a second-place overall, remains “a high performance agency,” that is top-ranked in EMEA and is also top-ranked globally in pitch participation.

OMD said its top ranking follows a three-year organizational transformation that began with the agency realigning its offer and operations around a brand promise of “Better decisions, faster,” an  effort that drove 13 consecutive quarters of new business growth. Last year it created a new Omni-driven data dashboard specifically designed to help accelerate real-time visibility for clients during the pandemic around recovery and readiness on market-by market basis.  

“For the past 12 months, while most of the industry was focused on getting through the crisis, OMD was looking ahead to how we could help our clients win the crisis, and lead in the new normal that will emerge from it,” said OMD Worldwide CEO Florian Adamski. 

The RECMA ranking, he added, helps affirm that “in 2020 OMD delivered performance that mattered, in the year that mattered most.” 

On the new business front, OMD said it added $1.429 billion in new billings while also retaining $578 million in existing business, for a combined win total of $2.02 billion – the highest for any media agency in 2020.

The agency has also added some big wins this year including Home Depot and Dr. Scholl’s in the US, the Victorian Government account in Australia, and the Lidl business in EMEA.