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Digital Technology The Drum Research

The Drum publishes its Digital Census for 2016, benchmarking the UK's digital sector

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

November 23, 2016 | 4 min read

The Drum has published the results of its annual Digital Census, a report which gives a detailed insight into the performance of digital agencies across the UK.

The Drum Digital Census

The Drum publishes its Digital Census for 2016, benchmarketing the UK's digital sector

The research, conducted in partnership with Results International and Merit, contains information on over 150 agencies in order to benchmark agency performance and identify the key players in the sector.

The results were presented at a breakfast held in The Drum's London office this morning (23 November) hosted by The Drum's co-founder and managing director Diane Young, with agencies featured in the report in attendance.

Agencies are ranked in the report across two metrics: financial performance and client satisfaction - which is based on ratings from the Recommended Agency Register (RAR).

The digital shops involved in this year's Census have pulled in a combined fee income of over £959m over the past year, with the average fee income per-agency sitting at £6.2m. Notably, 84% of agencies listed in the report displayed positive growth for the year, noting a combined surge of £127m across the industry.

The report is split into separate sections, listing agencies by staff size and detailing the results of media agencies separately.

Of the 150 agencies surveyed, MullenLowe Profero topped the rankings for agencies with 100 or more staff, with a turnover growth of £8.7m for the most recent financial year.

The Drum Digital Census 1
The Drum's co-founder Diane Young talks through the results of this year's Digital Census

For agencies with 51 to 99 staff, The BIO Agency topped the financial table, noting a boost of £5.4m. While over in the 26 to 50 staff agency category Cornwall and Milton Keynes-based agency Affinity took the top financial ranking, with a digital fee income growth of £781,276 between 2015 and 2016 which brought its turnover from digital up to £4.8m.

Last, but not least, in the one to 25 staff category independent agency Proctor + Stevenson came in first place with a growth of £413,993 for the latest financial year.

Agenda21 Digital topped the media agencies table for financial performance. More results can be found here.

The Digital Census also lists the agencies that have achieved the most effective balance across both the client satisfaction and financial performance polls. Referred to as elite agencies, the 100+ group was led by Forward3D, while The Big Group took the top spot for the 51 to 99 staff section across this metric.

Rawnet was listed as number one Elite agency for the 26 to 50 employees group, while Lewis Purestone took the accolade for the smallest group (one to 25 staff) in the rankings. NMPi was named as the top Elite media agency in this year’s Digital Cesus.

The Digital Census supplement is published with the latest issue of The Drum magazine (23 November), while the comprehensive full report, containing all tables and detailing all findings and analysis, as well as profiling each of the agencies analysed in the research, is also available.

You can view the topline rankings at the Digital Census website. In the meantime, take a look at some of the pictures from the breakfast below.

digi c
DIGITAL CENSUS PICS
DIGITAL CENSUS PICS
DIGITAL CENSUS PICS
DIGITAL CENSUS PICS
DIGITAL CENSUS PICS

You can find out more about The Drum's research projects here.

Digital Technology The Drum Research

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