Marketing Agency Revenue per Employee Benchmarks: 2026 Report

Revenue per employee is a common way to judge how productive a marketing agency group is, and publicly traded groups such as Omnicom, IPG and Stagwell report both their revenue and the number of people they employ. However, headline revenue includes the media and production costs that agencies pay to outside suppliers and bill on to clients, so it makes the groups that pass more of those costs through their accounts look more productive per person. Taking those costs out changes how the groups compare with one another.

Our analysts studied the annual filings of 12 publicly traded agency groups, from Omnicom, IPG and Stagwell to WPP, Publicis Groupe, Dentsu, S4 Capital, Next 15 and M&C Saatchi, and calculated both revenue per employee and net revenue per employee, which leaves those pass-through costs out.

In the following sections, we compare groups by company and size, show the change from 2024 to 2025, and track the holding companies' figures since 2019.

Marketing Agency Revenue per Employee by Company

Revenue and net revenue per employee were calculated for each group's latest fiscal year.

The figures are converted to US dollars, so groups that report in pounds, euros, yen and won can be compared directly. Omnicom and IPG share one row, because Omnicom acquired IPG in November 2025 and its annual report gives the two companies' combined revenue for the full year, so the 12 groups appear in 11 rows.

• The median net revenue per employee across the 10 companies that report a net figure is $138,900, the midpoint between Havas and M&C Saatchi. The range runs from $93,900 at Hakuhodo DY to $221,700 at Stagwell. The median revenue per employee across all 11 companies is $199,000, which is Hakuhodo DY's figure.
• Cheil Worldwide has the highest revenue per employee at $400,200, and its gross profit was 40.9% of revenue, the lowest share in the group. Hakuhodo DY's gross profit was 47.2% of revenue. At Havas, net revenue was 95.5% of revenue, so its two figures are almost the same.
• Agencies benchmarking themselves need to match the headcount basis first. Stagwell's $221,700 falls to $192,200 if contractors and part-time staff are counted. That $29,500 difference is larger than the gap between most groups that sit next to each other in the table, so future comparisons with these figures will only hold if staff are counted the same way.

Net Revenue per Employee by Agency Group Size

Agency size is one of the first things a client notices, so it is fair to ask whether the biggest groups earn more for each person they employ.

Grouping the 10 companies that report net revenue by size, five with more than 20,000 employees and five with fewer than 15,000, shows how the largest holding companies compare with smaller publicly traded groups on revenue per employee. Omnicom and IPG are left out because the combined company has no net revenue figure.

• The five smaller groups have a median net revenue per employee $30,900 higher than the five largest. Publicis Groupe, at $144,200, ranks above two of the five smaller groups, M&C Saatchi and S4 Capital.
• Being larger brings no productivity edge in this group of companies. Publicis Groupe is the only one of the five largest groups with net revenue per employee above the $138,900 median for all 10 companies.

Change in Agency Revenue per Employee, 2024 to 2025

Several agency groups cut staff or sold businesses in the past year, and the year-over-year change shows whether that raised what each employee brings in.

Comparing each company's latest fiscal year with the year before, in US dollars at the 2025 average exchange rate for both years so that exchange rates do not affect the changes, shows whether revenue per employee moved because of revenue or because of headcount.

• Net revenue per employee rose at six of the 10 companies and fell at four. Stagwell had the largest increase, 14.4%, with net revenue up 5.7% while its full-time headcount fell 7.6%. M&C Saatchi had the largest decline, 8.6%, with net revenue down 9.3% and average staff almost unchanged.
• WPP's average headcount fell 7.2% and its reported revenue less pass-through costs fell 10.4%, a figure that includes the sale of FGS Global and currency movements. WPP's annual report puts the like-for-like decline at 5.4% and says headcount from the start of the year fell 8.7%, along with less use of freelancers. Next 15's results statement says it cut headcount from 3,992 to 3,350 and reduced its portfolio from 22 businesses to 11.
• Several groups raised output per person by cutting staff. Omnicom and IPG combined kept revenue up 0.4% on about 8,200 fewer employees, which lifted their revenue per employee 7.2%.

Net Revenue per Employee Trend at Agency Holding Companies, 2019 to 2025

A longer view, back to before the pandemic, shows whether the holding companies have grown more productive per person over several years.

Net revenue per employee at the holding companies can be followed back to 2019, in US dollars at the 2025 average exchange rate, for every year that a company's filings report on a consistent basis. IPG's last annual report covers 2024. Dentsu's five-year summary begins in 2021, and Stagwell's and S4 Capital's comparable figures begin in 2022.

• Omnicom's net revenue per employee rose 0.5% from 2019 to 2024 and IPG's rose 8.5%. The US consumer price index rose 22.7% between the 2019 and 2024 annual averages, so in 2019 dollars Omnicom's 2024 figure was 18.1% lower than in 2019 and IPG's was 11.6% lower.
• WPP's net revenue per average employee was 3.2% lower in 2025 than in 2019, at $129,982. Its revenue per average employee rose 5.6% over the same years to $173,080, which matches the revenue per employee of about $172,800 that WPP reports as one of its own performance measures.
• Any growth comparison with Omnicom or IPG needs to be adjusted for inflation first.

Revenue per Employee Trend at Agency Holding Companies, 2019 to 2025

Some agency groups quote total revenue per employee as a headline figure, so it is worth seeing how that measure has moved alongside the net figure.

Total revenue includes the media and production costs that agencies pass through to suppliers, so revenue per employee can rise even when net revenue per employee does not.

• Revenue per employee rose faster than net revenue per employee at WPP, Publicis Groupe and Dentsu, because pass-through costs grew as a share of their revenue. WPP's revenue less pass-through costs was 82.0% of revenue in 2019 and 75.1% in 2025.
• Total revenue per employee is inflated by pass-through costs, so it can rise while the net figure falls, as it did at WPP.

Conclusion

A rising net revenue per employee figure in the latest fiscal year mostly reflected smaller staffs, so on its own it says little about whether an agency group won more work. Havas and Cheil Worldwide were the only groups that raised the figure while adding staff.

More broadly, headline revenue per employee overstates how productive an agency group is, and by a different amount at each group, because it counts the media and production costs passed through to suppliers. Net revenue per employee is the measure that can be compared from one group to the next. So if you compare agencies on revenue per employee, use the net revenue figure and check whether the headcount is an average or a year-end count.