Publicis Media leads the pack by a wide margin in global new business wins among media agencies for the first half of the year, according to an analysis from agency research firm COMvergence.  

The firm’s net new business billings total for the period was $6.34 billion, which factors in losses and retentions.  

Big wins for the company included The Coca-Cola Co.’s $835 million North America business and global wins from Barilla, Dropbox, Goodyear, LinkedIn, Mars, PayPal and Santander.   

IPG’s Mediabrands ranked second with $1.48 billion, driven largely by a strong performance in the U.S. Omnicom Media Group rounded out the top three finishers with $1.16 billion. Wins included the consolidated Kimberly-Clark assignment that included multiple markets (excluding North America).   

Dentsu and Havas ranked 4th and 5th respectively, followed by 6th ranked WPP, which COMvergence pointed out was the only group among the “Big 6” to lose ground with a net decline of $2.27 billion. Among its losses was the Coca-Cola assignment won by Publicis.  

At the agency network level, IPG’s Initiative was top ranked globally ($1.4 billion) with wins including Paramount and Anthropic. Publicis agency Spark Foundry was second and sibling agency Zenith was third.   

First half pitch volume totaled $17.6 billion, up 7% from the prior year period. The U.S. represented 45% of the total spend review globally, followed by China which accounted for 11%.  

The research firm assessed nearly 1,840 media account reviews across 49 countries. Local reviews accounted for 61% of the billings assessed with global and multinational reviews accounting for the rest.   

Independent agencies won $2.98 billion of the total billings reviewed, including two big wins for Horizon Media—Spectrum ($800 million) and Peloton ($225 million).