Publicis Media leads 2025 new business race with $10B in billings: COMvergence

According to the study Final 2025 Global New Business Barometer (NBB) published by COMvergence, Publicis Media led both the Total and Net New Business global rankings, generating $10B in new client billings — equivalent to one third of all media spend that shifted between agencies in 2025. Key wins included Coca-Cola in North America and 15 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.

Four groups followed at a distance — Mediabrands (2nd), Dentsu (3rd), Havas Media Network (4th) and Omnicom Media (OMG) (5th) — with total new business results ranging from $1.3B to $1.8B. WPP Media was the only Big 6 group to post a negative result in both total and net terms, losing 27% ($6.9B) of the total media spend that changed hands in 2025.

At agency network level, Starcom ranked #1 globally with a Total New Business Value of $2.7B, driven by wins including Mars and Aldi globally, and the retention of Luxottica in the US. Initiative ranked #2 with $2.4B, on the back of winning Bayer globally, Paramount Network and Anthropic in the US. Spark Foundry completed the Top 3 at $2.1B, buoyed by the global wins of Kenvue and Paramount.

In terms of NET new business, Starcom also leads the ranking, followed by Spark Foundry and Initiative, posting net new billing gains of +$1.9B, +$1.7B and +$1.4B respectively.

In 2025, COMvergence assessed more than 4,400 media account moves and retentions across 49 countries, involving 2,335 advertisers and totaling $37.4B (-4% vs. 2024). The U.S. accounted for 34% of total spend reviewed globally, followed by the UK at 10% and China at 8%.

The overall retention rate was just 21%, the lowest in eight years. Initiative led all agency networks in retaining client relationships after pitches, while Publicis Media recorded the highest overall retention rate among the Big 6 groups. In contrast, WPP Media retained only 16% of its $8.3B client billings reviewed.

Independent agencies (over 170 assessed in the report) captured $5B (13%) of total spend reviewed, with some significant wins in the US including Spectrum (Horizon Media, $800M), Peloton ($225M) and StarzPlay ($200M). It is also worth noting that Accenture Song won its first sizeable media account in Australia (Optus, $45M), whilst L'Oréal assigned its digital media account to Cosmos5 in Canada.