For questions about Ad Age Datacenter content, email [email protected].
For questions about your subscription, email [email protected]
Ad Age Datacenter features premium content, including profiles of top advertisers, media, agencies and more. Click plus signs for more detail. "Read more" links in each section give a brief history of primary research reports. Click here or call 1-877-320-1721 to subscribe to Datacenter.
Interested in a multi-user site license? Ask us!
Major marketers and their properties, agency companies, digital ventures and award winners.
Marketer Trees 2015 Update (December 2015)
Profiles, ad spending, brands, agencies and executives of the 100 Leading National Advertisers 2015.
Archived editions:
June 2015 • December 2014 • June 2014 • Dec. 2013 • June 2013 • Dec. 2012 • June 2012 • Dec. 2011 • June 2011 •
Dec. 2010 • June 2010 • Dec. 2009 • June 2009 •
Dec. 2008
Agency Family Trees 2015
Holdings of the world's 50 largest agency companies.
Archived editions: 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008
Global Marketers 2015
Biggest advertisers by media spending in more than 90 markets.
Archived editions: 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011 • 2010
Digital Family Trees 2013
Digital ventures of major media and agency companies. Data on digital marketing.
Archived editions:
2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008
Creativity's 2015 Awards Winners List
The definitive online tally of the best agencies, brands, creatives, production companies and directors, according to a weighted tabulation of the major advertising awards shows. Available only to subscribers of Ad Age's Creativity. Archived editions: 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008
About the Family Trees
This section includes Family Tree-style databases produced the Ad Age DataCenter.
Information in the Family Tree databases expands when users click the plus sign. In Agency Family Trees and some other databases, users can expand the datasets to even deeper levels. Beneath each agency holding company, data cards will expand at the agency network level; beneath agency networks, data will expand at the agency brand level.
Want to know more? Contact the Crain Information Centers for help researching historic Ad Age content.
Worldwide and U.S. marketing spending
200 Leading National Advertisers 2015
200 LNA archive 1997 to present
Comprehensive ad spending estimates, most-advertised brands, U.S. ad spending totals and more.
Marketer Trees 2015 Update (December 2015)
Ad Age's interactive database of the 200 Leading National Advertisers, including profiles and analysis, ad spending, brands, agencies and key executives.
Top 200 Megabrands
Ranking of biggest-spending brands based on U.S. measured-media spending.
BtoB 100
2014 ad spending for 100 largest U.S. business-to-business advertisers (August 2015).
Archived edition: 2013 spending (August 2014).
Global Marketers 2015
Global Marketers archive 1997 to present
World's largest advertisers by measured media; the 10 largest advertisers by country.
Advertising to sales ratios by industry 1997 to present
From Schonfeld & Associates.
Coen's annual spending totals 1997 to 2002
Historical data from Robert J. Coen, Interpublic Group's veteran ad forecaster. See current data in 100 Leading National Advertisers section.
About Ad Age's advertising spending data
Leading National Advertisers
Advertising Age has ranked 100 Leading National Advertisers since 1956. Links above show rankings from 1997 to present.
Rankings are based on measured-media ad spending plus Ad Age DataCenter's estimate of unmeasured spending. Unmeasured spending represents the difference between media monitored by research companies and total U.S. advertising and promotional spending for the year.
For most years, the ranking is accompanied by profiles of the100 LNA. Profiles now can be found in Ad Age's interactive databases. Earlier reports were published in the print edition of Advertising Age and in PDF format.
WPP's Kantar Media and predecessor firms have been the primary source of measured media data for the 100 LNA.
Megabrands
In addition to the LNA ranking of companies, Ad Age ranks the most-advertised U.S. brands. For these megabrand rankings, Ad Age aggregates all measured spending for a given brand. Recent megabrand annual rankings are published within the 100 LNA reports. Earlier rankings ran quarterly, and later twice a year, in Ad Age beginning May 21, 1990. Data are measured media only, analyzed by Ad Age, using significant basic data from WPP’s Kantar Media.
Global Marketers
Ad Age published the first listing of the world's top 100 marketers, ranked by measured media, Dec. 14, 1987. In some years the ranking ran in Ad Age's then-sibling publications Advertising Age International and, later, Ad Age Global. Editions from 1998 to present are here. Data are compiled from local sources including WPP's Kantar Media, Nielsen, Ibope, PARC and others. The 10 largest advertisers by country also are ranked within the report.
Coen figures
Robert J. Coen, retired senior VP-director of forecasting at Interpublic Group of Cos, compiled advertising spending estimates by medium. Some of his historic data are shown here.
Advertising to Sales Ratios
Schonfeld & Associates supplied Ad Age with advertising-to-sales ratios by industry beginning Oct. 3, 1977. Similar data were run in Ad Age as far back as Dec. 29, 1969, from various sources.
Want to know more? Contact the Crain Information Centers for help researching historic Ad Age content.
Rankings and analysis of agency companies, agency networks and agencies
Agency Report 2015
Agency Report archive 1998 to present
A global overview of the agency business. Includes advertising, media, digital, CRM/direct, promotion, PR and specialty agencies.
Agency Family Trees 2015
An interactive database that breaks out holdings of the world's 50 largest agency companies.
Agency Report Questionnaires
Want your agency included in Ad Age's Agency Report 2016 (to be published in April 2016)? Download the questionnaire.
About Ad Age's agency data
The earliest Advertising Age data ranking agencies dates from 1943. Rankings initially appeared as the Agency
Billings Report, then Agency Gross Income Rankings and most recently as the Agency Report.
Data on this site begin with the 1998 edition, which includes figures for 1996 and 1997.
Multi-tiered rankings
Agencies and agency companies are ranked on several levels.
Agency companies (sometimes holding companies) are the top level. This level may include independent agencies if they are of sufficient size.
Consolidated agency networks are the second level. These generally are branded, multinational networks, owning shops offering a variety of services.
The third level ranks agencies (or agency brands), often by discipline and without regard to the sibling shops in the same ranking.
A consolidated agency network may share the same name as an agency brand. But in the agency brand level, subsidiaries are stripped out of the network so that each each branded shop has an opportunity to be ranked. This offers a more granular level of analysis.
Rankings by discipline and the 75% rule
Rankings also include specialty disciplines, such as digital, search, direct, promotion, media, health care, African-American, Hispanic and Asian.
To keep rankings as equitable as possible, Ad Age uses the following rule: If an agency produces 75% or more of its revenue from a specific discipline, it will be shown ranked at 100% of its revenue in that specialty ranking. If revenue from the discipline is less than 75%, the agency will be ranked only by the percentage of its revenue
produced by work in that specialty.
Overlap by discipline is allowed. For example, a 100% digital agency may have revenue from search representing only
25% of its total. The agency would be ranked among digital shops at 100% of its revenue. Among search-marketing
agencies, the agency would only qualify to be ranked at 25% of its revenue.
Agency surveys
Rankings are based on Ad Age's widely distributed surveys of advertising agencies. Agencies are asked to provide Ad
Age with revenue figures, employee data, specialties, clients lists and more.
From these surveys, agencies are ranked in many categories including multicultural, healthcare, and in some years,
media billed.
However, in response to the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, many publicly traded agency companies declined to disclose
financial information by agency beyond what they published in annual reports, the Form 10-K and other public
documents and filings.
Beginning with the 2003 edition, Ad Age editors estimated the revenue figures by agency for these companies. In most
cases, when agency estimates appear in rankings, the agency name is accompanied by an asterisk.
Here's the most recent Ad Age Agency Report Questionnaire.
Revenue (or gross income) versus billings
Early reports ranked agencies by capitalized billings, essentially the addition of three components: 1) costs for
media space and time bought by the agency, 2) costs for materials and services charged to the client (including the
markup) and 3) any flat fees charged by the agency, multiplied by 6.67 (the inverse of 15%, the assumed media
commission paid to agencies at the time). This was sometimes known as volume, but most commonly know as just
billings.
Subsequent studies began to include what were sometimes called non-traditional agencies--companies offering direct
marketing, promotion and other services. Because the companies tended not to buy media, the idea of capitalized
billings became unwieldy. (These agencies did business on a fee or revenue basis. The process of "grossing up" those
fees, so they might be akin to media billings, made it difficult to produce accurate and equitable rankings.
Moreover, agencies either began to buy media for clients for a fee on a pass-through basis or, with the emergence of
media specialist agencies, not buy or plan media at all.
Ad Age began ranking agencies by revenue (then called gross income) in 1972. The three components of revenue/gross
income are 1) the commission on media, 2) the markup on materials and services and 3) flat fees charged to the
client.
Media specialists
Media buying and planning duties migrated from ad agencies to media specialist agencies during the 1990s. The first
ranking of media specialist agencies was published in Ad Age April 19, 1999, in that year's Agency Report.
Early media specialist rankings were by billings and after 2002 were based on data from RECMA, a Paris-based
research company. Beginning with the 2008 edition of the Agency Report, these rankings are by revenue and based on
Ad Age estimates or agency reporting.
Marketing-services agencies
Ad Age first ranked direct marketing agencies (at times referred to as direct response) March 26, 1987, in the Agency
Report (however, Ad Age published rankings of direct shops as early as April 16, 1984, from the Direct Marketing Association); sales promotion
agencies were first ranked April 4, 1988; digital agencies (initially called interactive agencies) July 26, 1999;
and search agencies Nov. 6, 2006, in the Search Marketing Fact Pack.
These specialized agencies over the years began to merge, combine disciplines and offer other services such as event
planning, customer relationship management and in-store marketing. Sometimes known as marketing services agencies,
ranked agencies are now incorporated within Ad Age's annual Agency Reports.
Agencies outside the U.S.
Rankings of agencies outside the U.S began April 27, 1959, with 72 shops, all listed in a single table.
Later rankings showed agencies by country.
At their peak in 2002, these rankings included more than 1,500 agencies in 124 countries. By this point, at least
one-third of agencies ranked in the international report were owned by or affiliated with large agency holding
companies. In reponse to Sarbanes-Oxley, many public companies in recent years have declined to provide detailed
financial data. Ad Age published the last of these reports in its print edition April 22, 2002.
Want to know more? Contact the Crain Information Centers for help researching historic Ad Age content.
Facts on digital media and marketing
25 largest U.S. search-marketing advertisers in 2013
Amazon Tops List of Google's 25 Biggest Search Advertisers.
Mobile Marketing Fast Facts 2014
From U.S. mobile ad-spending forecasts to subscribers by carrier: Data on the mobile market in the U.S.
Digital Family Trees 2013
Digital ventures of major media and agency companies. Archived editions: 2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008. The 2012, 2011 and 2010 editions included general data on digital market and social media.
Mobile Fact Pack 2013
Guide to mobile marketing. Includes ad spending by format, leading platforms, OEMs, penetration, consumer behavior and Ad Age DataCenter's ranking of agencies by U.S. revenue from mobile activities. Archived editions: 2012
Surveys about Facebook and Twitter: see Surveys section.
Digital Marketing 2011
Data on mobile market and online video.
Search Marketing 2009
Guide to search marketing. Includes search-engine market share, top keywords, online retail drivers and more. Search Marketing reports 2006 to 2009
Digital Marketing and Media Fact Pack 2007
Ad Age's 52-page guide to data on the digital world. In PDF format. Stats on online video, blogs, mobile and more.
Interactive Marketing and Media Fact Pack 2006
Includes demographics, advertisers, agencies, creative awards and more.
About digital
More information on the digital world also can be found in Ad Age's digital-themed editions.
Want to know more? Contact the Crain Information Centers for help researching historic Ad Age content.
U.S. industry employment stats and archived compensation reports
Ad industry jobs
Monthly data on U.S. advertising and media employment, 2000 to present. In Excel. Compiled by Ad Age DataCenter from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Executive compensation reports, 1999 to 2008
Ad Age's archived surveys of executive salaries and compensation trends in advertising, marketing and media. Includes top executive pay by industry category.
About jobs data
Ad Age DataCenter's monthly analysis of advertising and media employment based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Excel sheet shows monthly jobs data from 2000 to present.
Want to know more? Contact the Crain Information Centers for help researching historic Ad Age content.
Data on media companies and media properties. For more media data, click on Advertising Spending, Digital and Survey sections.
TV
Prime-time broadcast TV pricing survey, 2014-2015 Price for 30-second commercial on prime-time TV. Archived editions: 2013-2014 • 2012-2013 • 2011-2012 • 2010-2011 • 2009-2010 • 2008-2009
TV market facts and forecasts 2011
Ad Age’s coverage on the 50-year mark of Newton Minow’s “vast wasteland” speech.
Media companies
100 Leading Media Companies 2012
100 Leading Media Companies reports 1997 to 2012
The nation's largest media companies based on net U.S. media revenue. Ad Age produced this report through 2012.
Media Family Trees 2012
Nation's largest media companies by net U.S. media revenue. Includes significant TV, cable, print and digital holdings. Ad Age produced Media Family Trees through 2012.
Print media
Publishers Information Bureau, 2001 to 2014
Rankings of magazines by ad pages and dollars.
Magazine circulation rankings, 1998 to 2013
Semi-annual rankings of magazines by average circulation.
Newspaper circulation rankings, 1999 to 2013
Semi-annual rankings of newspapers by average circulation.
Magazine 300 reports, 1998 to 2008
Archived reports on Ad Age's ranking of 300 biggest U.S. magazines by gross revenue.
Consumer magazine linage, 1996 to 2004
Quarterly rankings of magazines by ad space sold.
Media markets
Ten Hot Media Markets, an archive
Ranking of the 10 largest media markets by media revenue per household. Most recently published: July 24, 2000.
About Ad Age's media data
100 Leading Media Companies
Advertising Age produced the 100 Leading Media Companies ranking from 1981 through 2012. Links on AdAge.com show data from 1997 through 2012.
Ad Age ranked media companies by estimated annual net U.S. media revenue. Subrankings included largest companies by medium (TV, radio, cable, newspaper, magazine, etc.) and biggest properties by medium. Early editions of the 100 Leading Media Companies featured profiles of the companies and lists of all media properties.
Magazine 300
The Magazine 300 ranking first appeared in Ad Age in June 18, 1990, and ran through 2008. Data on this site go back to 1997.
The 300 largest U.S. magazines are ranked by estimated gross revenue, a figure that includes gross advertising revenue and gross circulation revenue. Subrankings often include breakouts of largest titles by sector (business, consumer, technology) and by ad revenue, ad revenue growth, ad pages and ad page growth.
For these reports, publishers were given data on which to comment and amend where appropriate. But primary sources (shown below) are generally used.
Circulation
Newspaper and magazine circulation rankings in Ad Age Datacenter are available from 1998 through 2013 for six-month periods. Earlier data ran in print editions of Ad Age.
Ad Linage and Publishers Information Bureau
This series of consumer magazine ad linage reports was first published in Ad Age in Jan. 21, 1946. Data on this site go back to 1996. Magazines were surveyed quarterly by Advertising Age until the third quarter of 2004. More recent linage data are available on this site from PIB through 2014. PIB data include ad dollar revenue estimates by publication.
Media Markets
A ranking of the ten largest media markets by media revenue per household was last printed in Ad Age in 2000.
Top 100 Markets
Rankings on the Top 100 overall markets by population began Dec. 15, 1975, and ran annually until Dec. 8, 1986, in the print edition. They include data on media, retail spending and disposable income.
Want to know more? Contact the Crain Information Centers for help researching historic Ad Age content.
State of the industry. Ad Age's annual reports, 2002 to present
(Some Fact Packs sold separately.)
Annual 2016
Key stats and rankings; quick access to facts on marketers, media, agencies and jobs. Archived editions: 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008 • 2007
Digest-sized annual Fact Packs for 2003 to 2006 with links to comprehensive reports on advertisers, media and agencies. In PDF format. Archived Fact Packs: 2006 • 2005 • 2004 • 2003/2002
Hispanic Fact Pack, 2004 to present
Hispanic Fact Pack 2015
Ad Age's annual guide to the U.S. Hispanic market. Includes ad spending, agencies, creative awards and demographics. Archived editions: 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008 • 2007 •
2006 • 2005 • 2004
Fact Packs on digital marketing
Mobile Fact Pack 2013
Guide to mobile marketing. Includes ad spending by format, leading platforms, OEMs, penetration, consumer behavior and Ad Age DataCenter's ranking of agencies by U.S. revenue from mobile activities. Archived editions: 2012
Search Marketing 2009
Guide to Search Marketing, including search engine market share, top keywords, online retail drivers and more. Search Marketing reports 2006 to 2009
Digital Marketing and Media Fact Pack 2007
Ad Age's 52-page guide to data on the digital world. In PDF format. Stats on online video, blogs, mobile and more.
Interactive Marketing and Media Fact Pack 2006
Includes demographics, advertisers, agencies, creative awards and more.
About the annuals and Fact Packs
Ad Age publishes annual guides to industry data, drawing on rankings and analysis by the Ad Age DataCenter.
These print guides have appeared as both digest-sized Fact Packs and as data-focused issues of Ad Age.
The 2014 guide was published as an Ad Age Fact Pack in December 2013.
The first Ad Age Annual was published at the end of 2006 as a compilation of marketing, media and agency data. Indexes to the Annuals link to more comprehensive reports on each topic. Compilations of data for the four years prior were published as Fact Packs; these files are here in a downloadable PDF format.
Ad Age has published additional Fact Packs on such topics of interest as Hispanic Marketing and Media, Search Marketing and Digital/Interactive Marketing and Media.
Want to know more? Contact the Crain Information Centers for help researching historic Ad Age content.
Social Media
Advertising Age/RBC Social Media Survey, May 2014
Survey results in PDF format.
Facebook
Advertising Age/RBC Survey of Ad Industry Attitudes Toward Facebook, September 2013
Survey results in PDF format.
Advertising Age/Citigroup Survey of Marketer Attitudes Toward Facebook, February 2013 • 2012 edition
Survey results in PDF format.
Twitter
Ad Age’s Survey of Ad Industry Attitudes Toward Twitter, November 2013
Survey results in PDF format.
About the surveys
This section includes surveys produced by or commissioned by Ad Age.
Want to know more? Contact the Crain Information Centers for help researching historic Ad Age content.
Selected timelines showing history of advertising, media and marketing
History Lesson: A Timeline of Ad Agency Consolidation
A flurry of agency deals and moves in the mid-to-late '80s put players in place -- WPP and Martin Sorrell; Publicis and Maurice Levy; Omnicom and John Wren -- who would go on to lead the advertising business through decades of consolidation. Ad Age combed its archives to provide an overview that helps put the megamerger of Publicis Groupe and Omnicom Group into context.
Published: August 6, 2013
Procter & Gamble Co.'s Advertising Spending, 1987 to 2012
How P&G; compares at its 175th anniversary (2012) vs. its 150th anniversary in sales, ad spending, R&D; and employment.
Published: Oct. 29, 2012
A Century of Women in Advertising
From "I Wish I Were a Man" cigarette ads to "My Butt is Big and That's Just Fine".
Published: Sept. 23, 2012
Ad Age Picks the Top 10 Female Ad Icons of All Time
From the Morton Salt Umbrella Girl to Progressive's Flo, we choose the most memorable women of the last 100 years.
Published: Sept. 23, 2012
Chevy Timeline
100-year timeline of General Motors' Chevrolet including TV commercials, print ads and historic headlines from Advertising Age.
Published: Oct. 31, 2011
TV's Share of U.S. Advertising, 1948 to 2010
TV's portion of ad spending since the dawn of television.
Published: April 18, 2011
Old and Improved: Relationships That Last for a Century
Clients and agencies cite trust, respect, adaptation. If there's a problem, change the people, not the agency.
Published: February 14, 2011
From the Great Depression Through the Great Recession: A Brief History of Marketing
A look at 80 highlights from Ad Age's first 80 years (1930-2010), compiled from our archives, Ad Age's Encyclopedia of Advertising and additional research.
Published: March 29, 2010
Up in Smoke: Documents From the Annals of Tobacco Marketing
A collection of internal memos, press releases and reports that changed the way cigarettes were sold
Published: March 29, 2010
How GE Birthed NBC in 1926
The Peacock Network's many owners. Timeline compiled as General Electric Co. sold NBC to Comcast Corp.
Published: December 07, 2009
Special Report: McDonald's 50th Anniversary
McDonald's timeline. McDonald's came a long way from a purveyor of 15-cent hamburgers to a multinational marketer whose annual revenue exceeds the gross domestic product of Belarus, the 100th country to be blessed with a McDonald's restaurant. From San Bernardino to Beijing, here's how the premier fast-feeder evolved over a half-century.
Published: July 25, 2005
75 Years of Ideas
Key events from Ad Age's first 75 years, 1930 to 2005.
Published: March 28, 2005
Advertising History, 1704 to 1999
From Advertising Age's "The Advertising Century" Special Issue.
Published: March 29, 1999
A Look Back at 50 Years of Agency History
And how Ad Age's Agency Report covered it.
Agency History, Part 1
Agency History, Part 2
Agency History, Part 3
Agency History, Part 4
Published: April 13, 1994
About the timelines
This section includes historic timelines produced by Ad Age.
Want to know more? Contact the Crain Information Centers for help researching historic Ad Age content.
For questions about Ad Age Datacenter content, email [email protected].
For questions about your subscription, email [email protected]