Mapping the sector: Agency by Agency’s 2025 story

What does it take to map something that has never been mapped before? Following on from 2024, when we secured funding from Innovate UK to develop the tools we needed to map the UK agency sector for the first time, this was a year of bringing all our hard work out into the public. Out of the UK’s first comprehensive mapping of the marketing, advertising, creative and media agency sector, we have established Agency by Agency as a trusted source of impartial intelligence and helped decision-makers across the sector find clarity thanks to our data and insight.

Mapping the sector for the first time

Working closely with our partners at The Data City, the opening months of the year were spent perfecting our new taxonomy and agency lists in order to map agencies across 29 different but overlapping specialisms. By March we were ready to reveal the true scale of the UK agency sector for the first time: 25,495 agencies employing 265,000 people, generating £34.9bn in turnover and contributing £20.5bn in GVA to the UK economy. These quickly became the established and widely quoted figures for understanding the size of the agency sector.

“At last, we can shine a detailed light on the industry as a whole.” 
– Paul Mead, Chair of We Discover and Beacon lead at the IPA

The response to even these headline figures, via our website, newsletter and on LinkedIn, revealed the sector’s hunger for reliable intelligence at a scale that had simply never existed before. 

The launch of Agency by Agency Explore with our Industry Report in March was the culmination of eighteen months of work, training The Data City’s platform to identify and classify agencies, and then pulling together information from a variety of sources to give us financial records, investment and innovation data, growth measures and more.

This allowed us to do two key activities: identify trends and tell the stories of the sector through our reports and articles, and to create bespoke lists of agencies for those with precise requirements and for a variety of needs. 

Our reports and articles reveal the unexpected stories of the sector

Following on from our Industry Report in March, we have published a series of reports and articles, all of which are free to read on Agency by Agency Explore. Our Growth Report in June delivered some compelling insights into the specialisms with agencies with the highest growth rates. Social purpose and sustainability agencies led across all specialisms with 22%, followed by Amazon/Marketplace at 20.4% and Influencer agencies at 16%. Meanwhile, agencies in traditional strongholds such as Design and branding or Creative and advertising showed growth rates below the sector average.

“The most comprehensive data ever compiled on the sector”
– Omar Oakes, writing in Little Black Book

Our IndieNation Report took a closer look at independent agencies, who make up 99% of all active agencies and employ 88% of the agency workforce. Our Social purpose and sustainability Report showed how our mapping takes us into all corners of agency sector, while our Bristol city spotlight and Workforce Report allowed us to explore regional trends and other stories from the agency ecosystem that help our understanding of a sector that has been recognised as part of the creative industries as one of the eight priority sectors within the UK government’s new Industrial Strategy. 

Find an agency: Connecting the right people

Building upon our comprehensive mapping of more than 25,000 agencies across the UK allowed us to launch our Find an Agency service to connect those seeking agencies with the right fit across a diverse range of use cases.

We’ve worked with agency groups to help them identify agencies to acquire in specific subsectors and specialisms, filtering by growth rates, geographic location and size criteria. Our benchmarking data has provided deeper understanding during due diligence processes, and we’ve also helped with agency lists based on particular metrics for those looking to develop strategic partnerships.

“Did you know there are over 25,495 agencies active in the UK? That’s according to new data insights business, Agency by Agency, which launched this week.”
– Ad Association Ad Matters, March 2025

Our team has also supported major international media owners to craft propositions that respond to the needs of specific agencies and with sector organisations to help improve the data they hold on agencies. 

Agencies themselves have used our bespoke reporting to understand their competitive landscape, identify potential collaboration partners or explore acquisition opportunities within their specialisms. All of this allows us to transform our comprehensive mapping into actionable intelligence, enabling more informed decision-making and success for our clients.

Getting together to build a network of collaboration

Despite a wealth of agency experience within our team, Agency by Agency is a young company, so it has been an absolute joy to engage within the wider sector and build our network. We owe a lot of people our thanks, too many to mention. Ian Harris and the Agency Hackers team were extremely supportive, inviting us to their Growth Summit in February and Built to Withstand in October. James Longhurst and Media Leader welcomed us to Future Media Manchester. We participated in the GYDA Summit thanks to Robert Craven, connected with Michael Murdoch at Agency Folk and joined Alexandra Balazs and Richard Gregory at Prolific North’s From Growth to Gold.

One of the key events that got us first noticed across the sector came through Clive Mishon at the Alliance of Independent Agencies webinar early in the year, which not only launched broader conversations about the value of our data across the sector, but led to our first collaboration with our IndieNation report. 

Other events that were particular highlights included John Bradbury’s Blink Advisory Breakfast Briefing, Kevin Smith’s The Fuel Podcast, and of course, the chance to contribute to The Data City Summit, where we could share our mapping of the agency sector beyond the sector, and celebrate the results of our partnership and work with Andy, Jack and The Data City team.

All of these events reinforced something that we have noticed from the moment we started work on Agency by Agency almost two years ago: there is a radically different, and more positive, ethos of collaboration across the sector which wasn’t always there before. Across all these events, presentations, podcasts and meetings, we’ve seen a genuine appetite for sharing insights and supporting collective understanding, and we hope that our mapping is playing a meaningful role in this.

Why data matters: Shaping policy and understanding

The development of Agency by Agency over the last twelve months, and indeed since we began on this journey with our Innovate UK grant in 2024, has taught us that good and useful data doesn’t just exist, it takes a lot of work to create. But there is great value in that work and our shift to making our reports and articles freely available this autumn has generated overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Throughout all of our work, we have first discovered and then shown, that our sector is remarkably diverse, with different types of agencies experiencing very different things within the current economic context. Success looks different depending on size and specialism, not to mention location and purpose. This complexity makes us ever more sure that anyone interested in understanding the reality of the agency sector in 2025 and beyond needs to take a nuanced approach rather than one-size-fits-all interventions.

“This new analysis provides industry insight that we’ve never had in such detail before.”
– Jason Neale, Managing Director at Agency Works 

This will become ever more important as the agency sector within the creative industries begins to navigate the challenges of our current times as well as the opportunities that lie within the Industrial Strategy. We are already working with regional partners on reporting that will be an important aid when it comes to evidence-based policy development.

Looking ahead to 2026

There are three main pillars to our work as we look forward to the new year. Firstly, we are always improving our data infrastructure, updating and maintaining our information, and adding new data points and metrics to our analysis, so make sure both our Find an Agency service as well as our intelligence and insight, are built upon the best and most comprehensive data.

Secondly, we are planning our second major industry report, the Agency by Agency Atlas, which we will publish in April 2026. We are extremely excited about the possibilities for this report and the stories that are already beginning to emerge as we work on it. We will continue to publish reports and articles on Agency by Agency Explore, with early year plans including an Innovate UK report, a look at the gender pay gap within the agency sector, and a collaboration with Treacle on the language of agencies and agency propositions.

And third, we are putting in place the foundations for 2027, when we hope to expand our data and mapping of the agency sector beyond the UK. So if all this sounds interesting to you, make sure you are signed up to The Briefing for regular updates via email. 

And if you’ll indulge us here: one of the joys of working on Agency by Agency has been working with friends, both within our team and those we have made in the sector. We’re looking forward to more of that in 2026 as well!

There are a lot of people with opinions about how agencies should navigate the current storm we are in. Many are deeply unhelpful and some are potentially dangerous. Our mapping and exploration of the agency sector over the past couple of years has convinced us that there are not many that understand the nuances of it as well as we do, and that we also know that its complexity is why there can be no easy answers.

Our job is to help everyone connected with the sector, from investors and advisors, to service-providers, media and policymakers, not to mention agency networks and agencies themselves, be armed with the best information upon which to make their decisions. If you have read this far and think that we might be able to help you, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks to everyone who has joined us on this journey so far, and we look forward to what’s to come in 2026,

Jasmine, Joe, Paul and Tom

Enough of what we think – here’s what others have been saying about us…

We’ve been very grateful for everyone who has shared our work, talked about our data and let others know about what we have been up to. Here’s a selection of our media cuttings from 2025: 

Media Leader 

• Growth at indies outpaces wider agency sector
• Agencies employ 265,000 and turn over £35bn, new analysis reveals
• What you need to know about the northern agency landscape
• Northern media businesses urged to celebrate their superpower
• How agentic AI’s machine muscle and the thinking power of media indies can level the playing field

The Drum 

• How agencies are finding power in the middle
• Can WPP’s self-serve AI offer Open Pro win without cannibalizing the agency market?

New Digital Age

• New research reveals full scale of UK agency sector for the first time

Little Black Book 

• Ignore the 99% at Your Peril

Prolific North 

• £35bn turnover and 265k employees: New tool promises first-ever ‘full picture’ of UK’s booming agency sector
• North’s biggest-ever study of brand-agency relationships launches, exploring the impact of AI 
• Why Northern agencies are built for the future of the UK’s creative economy
• The Prolific North Top 50 PR Agencies 2025: Profit booms at the top as rest of sector faces mixed fortunes

Stephen Wadds Substack

• How independent agencies define the UK’s creative economy

Data City

• How Agency by Agency mapped the UK’s agency sector using The Data City

Ad Association

• https://adassoc.org.uk/our-work/ad-matters-14-03-25/ 

Performance Marketing World

• Is the holding company model ‘dead in the water’?

Active International

• What Manchester does today.. | The Drum

Rocksteady

• A Year in Review: What Profitable Agencies did Differently in 2025

Photo credits:
Title Image by GeoJango Maps on Unsplash
Tom at Agency Hackers Growth Summit courtesy of Agency Hackers