The Wow Company has released the 2019 agency benchmark report resulting from its annual survey of independent agency owners in the UK. Topics include growth rates, confidence levels, amount of time owners spend working, cash flow/invoicing/collecting payments, new business, and networking tips.

In this article, the World Federation of Advertisers shares highlights from its report on global media agency models and remuneration trends.

The industry is seeing more clients evolving Project-by-Project (PxP) arrangements with agencies. PxP relationships between clients and agencies create both opportunities and challenges for both marketers and marketing services firms. Members of the 4A’s community have been endeavoring to figure out best practices for dealing with the shift by some clients from annual retainer relationships with their agencies to PxP relationships.

The 2018 Employee Compensation final report, showing salaries as of May 2018, has just been published. The study includes salary data from agencies of all sizes, reflecting the responses of 333 member agency offices providing data on over 30,000 salaries for 233 job titles in 19 job categories.

The following presentations took place at the Ad Age 2018 Small Agency Conference, July 17th and 18th, in Marina Del Rey, Calif.  

Agencies around the world share their growth challenges in this report from Hubspot.

This presentation was delivered to the 4A’s Large Agency & Media Finance Committees on October 26, 2017 by Rick Brook, SVP, Global Client Operations at WPP. 

SoDA conducted a survey to explore business performance measurement within agencies, production companies and design studios. Topics such as employee turnover rates, budget tracking, promoting and maintaining healthy levels of team and client satisfaction, benchmarking data, and much more are explored. View the summary findings and benchmarking data.

Tim Williams of Ignition Consulting Group provides sound advice on ways to create new revenue streams for your agency.

On July 27th, 4A’s held an agency-only webinar to help survey participants and 4A’s members understand the important information contained in the 2017 Labor Billing Rate Survey Report (LBRSR).

Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group discusses the rise of marketing procurement and its impact on fees and the agency business.

Bruno Gralpois of Agency Mania Solutions provides some perspective on the question of working and non-working spending. There is no generally accepted industry ratio for working to non-working spending and Bruno explains why.

On July 19th, the 4A’s hosted the “Overtime Rules Change Webinar” which provided information on overtime rules that will become effective on December 1, 2016.

A series of regularly updated surveys on employee benefits in agencies.

This report covers actual hourly rates agreed upon between agencies and clients in 2014, and provides the industry with labor billing rate information.

The 4A’s Board of Directors has adopted a new 4A’s position paper, developed by the 4A’s Finance Committees, “Best Practice Guidance | Agency Compensation: Market-Based Labor Rates.”

This survey report provides benchmark information related to the adoption of performance evaluations and the dimensions that are most frequently included in client assessment of agency performance.

This four-phase survey series is designed to provide agency management with key financial benchmarks relevant to 4A’s members.

This survey provides important information about agency digital operations including revenue sources, relationship structures, monetization of I.P., and digital services agreements.

Survey on Media Compensation Methodologies and Equivalent / Effective Commission Ratios. The survey requested information pertaining to methods of compensation relating solely to compensation for media services. Survey participants were asked to report “equivalent/effective commission rates” used for various media buying and planning services, regardless of the methods of compensation in use at their agencies. […]

This report provides information on the billing and payment arrangements of 4A’s members for Network TV, Production, Agency Compensation and other paid media channels, for their ten largest clients.

This survey report features results from 168 member agencies, representing 600 client relationships and provides information on many aspects of incentive compensation including prevalence, structure, and amount; correlation with business relationship and base compensation; agency/client relationship management; and performance incentive criteria.

Members of the 4A’s legal, finance and commercial practices communities have developed agency-client master service agreement (MSA) guidance related to Allocation of Risk, Indemnification & Limitations on Liability.

Members of the 4A’s Finance committees believe that it is in the best interest of both the agency and client communities to provide information on agency overhead and agency profit.