Of the estimated 50,000 independent agencies worldwide, Forrester expects one in five to be acquired, cut back or closed next year. Its report says mid-sized generalists will see their margins fall further, while specialists and agencies strong in technology will do well.
Last month, Martin Woolley and Paul Phelps, former co-founders of the Alliance of Media Independents, launched Media United with 30 agencies as founding members.
I support what Media United is setting out to do and its plans cover some of the problems Forrester defines. But Forrester is also describing a market where clients choose agencies for being differentiated.
The word “independent” in reality tells a client that they are not one of the big holding companies — something that is rarely the reason the client will choose them.
Independence confirms structure
The Forrester report names Mischief, Mother, Dept, PMG, Horizon Media and Wpromote as agencies that will remain attractive to marketers. It credits them with differentiated thinking, specialised expertise, strong talent, fast execution and proprietary technology. None of those qualities depends on who owns the agency.
Ownership is the only thing “independent” confirms and the range it covers is very wide. Horizon Media is the largest independent media agency in the US; Mischief is a creative agency in New York. Some independents are backed by private equity and many are owned by the people who run them.
The label covers creative shops, performance marketers, media planners and digital transformation consultancies. Media United’s members — UK agencies that plan and buy across all media — are counted in the same group as all of them.
Competitors or competitive alternatives?
The agencies under threat — generalists among them — face pressure from adtech platforms and automation technology that’s empowering capabilities on the client side. Holding companies aren’t named as a cause. To that point, 67% of B2C marketing decision-makers say insourcing more creative and production work will be a high priority over the next 12 months.
For an independent media agency, the competition usually looks like this. In a pitch, it competes against other independents. Some of the larger independents will also go up against holdco agencies from time to time — that’s true. But outside the pitch process, the client’s own team is now using self-serve tools that offer a growing alternative to hiring an agency at all.
Plenty of independents still describe themselves mainly in contrast to the holding companies, promising senior attention and fewer conflicts. Those claims are structurally true, but they help only against a competitor that is rarely on the shortlist.
Another independent can make exactly the same promises, but a client will be looking for difference — to answer the question “why should they choose you over anyone else?” — and that now includes democratised media planning, buying and creative tech as a credible alternative.
Making choices to help independents get chosen
Media United is majority-owned by its members and funded through membership fees and income from commercial partners. Commercial opportunities are only part of the plan.
Woolley said the collective will develop an accreditation scheme for the technology and data companies that sell to agencies, checking whether their stated capabilities, including AI, can be substantiated.
Media United will also campaign on behalf of challenger brands with budgets of up to about £30m and plans a campaign for quality content next year. Its argument is that challengers can compete through well-planned campaigns in high-quality media environments when they cannot win on scale.
These are positioning decisions — and very sound ones. Media United has named the customer it serves and what it offers that customer as unique value. The accreditation scheme also applies the test buyers increasingly use on any supplier, whether its claims can be proved.
Helping members differ from each other
Media United does a great deal on the problems a group can solve together, because shared standards and commercial scale strengthen the case for independent agencies as a whole.
Forrester’s prediction is about individual agencies, though, and its description of the agencies under threat begins with the word “generalist”. Media United describes all 30 of its members as full-mix agencies that plan and buy across the full range of media.
Media United could make members’ differences part of what it promotes, so someone can see which member is strongest for a brand that wants to go on TV for the first time and which suits a subscription business that depends on performance media. It could also apply the same standard its accreditation scheme sets for vendors, so that every claim an agency member makes about its work can be proved.
Forrester’s B2B predictions for 2027 say two-thirds of providers will lose deals because buyers cannot verify their claims, with buyers using AI tools to compare suppliers and check what they say. A marketing director who asks an AI assistant for an independent media agency suited to a challenger brand will get a shortlist based on how agencies describe themselves and what others write about them.
The agencies that win the work will be the ones that have stated which clients they are best for and can prove what they do for them.
Media United has given its members a shared case for being taken seriously by challenger brands. Independent agencies need to use this as a platform from which to elevate and differentiate themselves with enough specificity that a client, or the AI tool the client asks, can choose it.
