Publicis Media led both the total and net new business global rankings in 2025, according to the latest Final 2025 Global New Business Barometer ratings published by global research firm, Comvergence.
The media group collectively generated $10bn in new client billings last year, equivalent to one-third of all media spend that shifted agencies.
Wins included Coca-Cola in North America, as well as 15 other global or regional accounts: Aldi, Barilla, Campari, Dropbox, Essilor, Friesland Campina, Goodyear, Kenvue, LinkedIn, Mars, Paramount, PayPal, Santander, Savencia and The Magnum Ice Cream Company.
It is the seventh consecutive year Publicis has outpaced its rivals on global new business.
Comvergence noted that four media agency groups “followed at a distance”: Mediabrands (formerly IPG, now Omnicom, but reported separately), Dentsu, Havas Media Network and Omnicom Media saw net new business results range from $1.3bn to $1.8bn.
Commenting on the results, Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun acknowledged “the strength of our growth model” at a time when the industry is “dominated by wide-ranging cost-cutting due to restructuring and consolidation”.
He added: “Despite Omnicom taking over IPG to become the largest player in 2026, the outstanding efforts of our teams and the scale of our growth in 2025 mean that this year we are maintaining and increasing our leadership position as the #1 media buyer in the US and China, the two most important markets for global clients, where scale still matters.”
WPP Media, Comvergence found, was the only ‘Big 6’ group to post a negative result in both total and net terms. The company lost 27% ($6.9bn) of the total media spend that changed hands last year, and retained just 16% of its $8.3bn in client billings that were reviewed.
Notably, overall business retention was just 21% last year among all agencies, the lowest in eight years.
The results unsurprisingly trickled down to the agency level. Publicis agencies Starcom, Spark Foundry and Zenith ranked first, third and fourth by total new global business, respectively.
Starcom’s major wins last year included the global accounts for Mars and Aldi.
Rounding out the top five are Initiative (formerly of Interpublic Group, now part of Omnicom Group) and Havas Media.
Initiative’s significant wins last year included Bayer (globally), as well as Paramount and Anthropic in the US.
Meanwhile, independent agencies (of which 170 were assessed as part of Comvergence’s reporting) captured $5bn, equivalent to 13% of total media spend reviewed last year.
Significant wins for indies included Horizon Media’s US wins of Spectrum ($800m), Peloton ($225m) and StarzPlay ($200m). Accenture Song, meanwhile, won its first sizeable media account in Australia last year (Optus, $45m).
