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Explore Ad Age's Databases
Top companies and their properties, award winners and more
Media Family Trees 2009
Profiles and major holdings of the nation's 100 Leading Media Companies and results by media sector
2008 edition
Digital Family Trees 2009
Interactive ventures of top media, web portal and agencies companies
2008 edition
Agency Family Trees 2009
Holdings of the world's top 50 agency companies
2008 edition
Marketer Family Trees (June '09)
Ad spending, brands, agencies and executives of the 100 Leading National Advertisers
2008 edition (Dec. '08)
Creativity's 2009 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.
2008 edition (Aug. '08)
Current AdMarket 50 Stock Prices
The Advertising Age/Bloomberg AdMarket 50 index tracks the stocks of 50 major marketer, media and agency companies.
Advertising Spending
Top marketers, industry totals, company profiles, more
100 Leading National Advertisers 2009
1997 to present
Featuring comprehensive ad spending estimates, top 200 megabrands, U.S. ad spending totals and more.
Marketer Trees 2009 (Dec. '08)
Marketer Trees Archive From Dec. '08
Ad Age's interactive database of the nation's top 100 advertisers.
Global Marketers 2008
1997 to present
World's top advertisers by measured media and top 10 by country. Also: Global Accounts (or Dots).
Coen's Annual Spending Totals 1997 to 2002
From Magna Global's Robert J. Coen. More current data are among 100 Leading National Advertisers, above. (Look for tables headlined "Total U.S. Ad Spending By Media")
Advertising to sales ratios by industry 1997 to present
From Schonfeld & Associates
Top 200 Megabrands
Top brands ranked by measured U.S. media spending.
- ABOUT ADVERTISING SPENDING DATA
- Leading National Advertisers
Advertising Age has ranked 100 Leading National Advertisers since 1955. Links above show rankings from 1997 to present.
Rankings are based on measured media ad spending plus estimated unmeasured spending, a figure created by Ad Age editors to represent 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 the top 100. Profiles can now be found in Ad Age's interactive databases. Earlier reports were published in the print edition of Advertising Age and in PDF format.
TNS Media Intelligence and predecessor firms have been the primary source of measured media data for the LNA 100.
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 LNA 100 reports. Earlier rankings ran quarterly in Ad Age beginning May 21, 1990. The frequency was reduced to twice a year. Links to the Megabrands are now with Index to the 100 LNA by year. Data are measured media only, analyzed by AdAge, using significant basic data from TNS.
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 sister publications Advertising Age International and later Ad Age Global. Editions from 1998 to present are here. Data are compiled from local sources including TNS, Nielsen, Ibope, PARC, Steadman Group and others. The top ten marketers by country also are ranked within the report.
Coen figures
Robert J. Coen, senior VP-director of forecasting at Interpublic Group of Cos.' Magna, compiles advertising spending estimates by medium. His data are shown here from 1997 to present.
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.
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Media
Data on media companies and media properties
100 Leading Media Companies 2009
1997 to present
The nation's largest media companies based on net U.S. media revenue.
Magazine 300 2008
1998 to present
Ad Age's annual ranking of the top 300 magazines in the U.S. by total gross revenue.
Publishers Information Bureau 2001 to present
Rankings of magazines by pages and dollars.
Magazine Circulation Rankings 1998 to present
Semi-annual rankings of magazines by average circulation.
Newspaper Circulation Rankings 1999 to present
Semi-annual rankings of newspapers by average circulation.
Consumer Magazine Linage 1996 to 2004
Quarterly rankings of magazines by ad space sold.
Ten Hot Media Markets, an archive
A ranking of the ten largest media markets by media revenue per household. Most recently published: July 24, 2000.
- ABOUT MEDIA DATA
- 100 Leading Media Companies
Advertising Age has ranked 100 Leading Media Companies since Dec. 7, 1981. Links on AdAge.com show data from 1997 to present.
Ad Age ranks media companies by estimated annual net U.S. media revenue. Subrankings include top companies by medium (TV, radio, cable, newspaper, magazine, etc.) and top properties by medium. Early editions of the 100 Leading Media Companies featured profiles of the companies and lists of all media properties.
The interactive Media Family Trees application, launched in 2008, includes profiles, top properties and revenue by property.
Some recent editions were accompanied by a poster showing Media Family Trees, offering a look at companies' media ownership and cross-ownership of properties and each other. PDFs of the posters are linked.
Magazine 300
The Magazine 300 ranking first appeared in Ad Age in June 18, 1990. Data on this site go back to 1997.
The top 300 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 top 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
The series of newspaper and magazines circulation rankings on this site appear back to 1998 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 current linage data are available on this site from PIB. 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, disposable income and more.
Sources of Media Data
Key sources for Ad Age media data reports: public documents (annual reports and Form 10-K), Publishers Information Bureau (via TNS Media Intelligence), BIA Financial Network, SNL Kagan, Audit Bureau of Circulations, BPA Worldwide, SRDS, Perq/HCI and Ad Age DataCenter estimates.
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Agencies
Agency Report 2009
1998 to present
A global overview of the advertising agency business. Includes media agencies, digital agencies, search agencies, direct marketing and promotion shops.
Agency Family Trees 2009
An interactive database, including holdings of the World's Top 50 Agency Companies.
Media Specialist Companies
Top media agencies
Marketing Services
Top Direct Marketing, Sales Promotion and Digital shops
- ABOUT 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
Digital, search, direct, promotion, media, African-American, Hispanic, Asian, healthcare--all of these specialties are of interest to Ad Age readers.
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.
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 DMA); 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.
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Jobs Data and Exec Compensation
Ad Industry Jobs
Monthly data on advertising and media employment, in Excel
Executive Compensation 2008 1999 to present
Ad Age's survey of executive salaries and compensation trends throughout advertising, marketing and media. Includes top executive pay by industry category.
- Jobs Data and Exec Compensation
- 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 2006 through 2009.
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Annuals, Fact Packs and more
Includes Fact Packs, AdMarket 50 and other data
Annual 2009
It's going to be a tough year. Here's what you need to know to plot your downtime strategy.
Annual 2008 Annual 2007
Fact Pack 2006
A 60-page synopsis of the year's data, with links to comprehensive reports on
advertisers, media and agencies, in PDF format.
2005 edition 2004 edition 2003/2002 edition
Search Marketing 2009
Guide to Search Marketing, including search engine market share, top keywords, online retail drivers and more.
Search Marketing reports and Fact Packs 2006 to present
Digital Marketing and Media Fact Pack
A 52-page guide to data on the digital world, 2007 edition, in PDF format. Vital statistics on new trends in online video, blogs, mobile and more.
2006 edition called the Interactive Marketing and Media Fact Pack, including demographics, advertisers, agencies, creative awards and more.
Hispanic Fact Pack 2009
A guide to the U.S. Hispanic market, including demographics, agencies, creative awards. Download digital edition for $29.
2009 edition
2008 edition
2007 edition
2006 edition 2005 edition
2004 edition
AdMarket 50
Advertising Age/Bloomberg AdMarket 50 index tracks stocks of 50 publicly traded marketer, media and agency companies. This market capitalization-weighted index launched in May 2000.
DataCenter Columns
Weekly column on topics including employment, new-business rankings and media usage, with extended downloadable data. This column ran from 2007 through early 2009.
- ABOUT ANNUALS AND OTHER DATA
- The first Ad Age Annual was published at the end of 2006 as a compilation of marketing, media and agency data run throughout the year. Indexes to the Annuals link to more comprehensive reports on each topic.
Compilations of data for the four years prior were published in the form of digest-sized "Fact Packs." These files are here in a downloadable PDF format.
Additional Fact Packs were published on such topics of interest as Hispanic Marketing and Media, Search Marketing and Digital/Interactive Marketing and Media.
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Industry Contact Lists
Exclusive contact lists in this section are premium content, offered only to subscribers of the Ad Age DataCenter. Complete with key personnel, mailing addresses and corporate phone numbers, the lists are downloadable Excel spreadsheets.
To subscribe, go to adage.com/datasub
List are based on rankings and analysis from various reports. For more information on the data, click links above.
Marketing Personnel from 100 LNA
From the 100 Leading National Advertisers and Marketer Trees 2009 database, June 22, 2009.
Next update: Dec. 28, 2009
Top Execs from Media 100
From 100 Leading Media Companies and Media Family Trees 2009 database, Oct. 5, 2009.
Next update: fall 2010.
Power Players
Contact list for the megastars of marketing, Oct. 13, 2008. Includes titles and addresses.
Next update: Nov. 2, 2009
Women to Watch
Contact list for women in the marketing, media and agency fields whose accomplishments and potential made them standout, June 2, 2008.
Next update: June 1, 2009
Media Mavens
Contact list for the most innovative and influential media buyers and strategists, Sept. 8, 2008.
Next update: Sept. 14, 2009
Lists from Agency Report and Agency Family Trees database, April 27, 2009.
Next update Spring 2010.
Agency Companies
Top executives from the top 50 agency companies.
Agency Brands
Executives from more than 900 advertising agencies in the U.S.
Multicultural Agencies
Multicultural agencies may be included among agency brands and marketing services shops. They're separately listed here for convenience.
African-American Agencies
Executives at the top 15 African-American agencies
Hispanic-American Agencies
Executives at the top 50 Hispanic-American agencies
Asian-American Agencies
Executives at the top 10 Asian-American agencies
Shops by Discipline
Shops in lists below may be included among agency brands and marketing services shops. They're separately listed here for convenience.
Digital Agencies
Executives at the top 50 agencies with revenue from digital advertising.
Search Marketing Agencies
Executives at the top 25 agencies with revenue from search engine marketing.
Direct Marketing Agencies
Executives at the top 50 agencies with revenue from direct marketing.
Promotion and Event Marketing Agencies
Executives at the top 50 agencies with revenue from promotion.
Healthcare Agencies
Executives at the top 25 agencies with revenue from healthcare.
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