Amidst a fast-paced and noisy consumer landscape, total revenue across Orange County’s top advertising agencies rose 4.1% compared to last year.
“There has been such a large emphasis on content, data, and performance marketing in the last decade, it’s created a landscape where there is entirely too much content and noise out there,” Gigasavvy President Kyle Johnston told the Business Journal.
Laguna Beach-based Gigasavvy saw revenue drop 5% to $12.6 million in 2024, causing the firm to slip four spots to No. 15 on the list.
“Brands now have to work harder to stand out and connect on an emotional level with their audiences and that doesn’t just mean creating and buying more of the same boring ads,” Johnston said.
The agency in 2025 will be testing a new accelerated and cost-effective offering to provide brands with “big ideas and strategies that are designed to demand attention and cut through the clutter.”
“It means pivoting back to creativity and calculated disruption to solve their marketing challenges,” he added.
This year’s list includes 20 local firms which collectively recorded revenue of $1.1 billion in 2024, inching up 4.1% from the year before.
Local employment fell 1.5% to 1,464 people working in Orange County while companywide headcount jumped 10% to 1,639 employees, as of February 2025.
Innocean USA kept its No. 1 spot reporting $427 million in revenue for the 12 months ended December 2024, up 1.2% from the year before. The Huntington Beach office did increase its OC team by 11% to 655.
Several agencies reported gains last year, including RadioActive Media Inc. The Orange-based firm captured a 172% increase to almost $15 million in 2024, marking the largest increase on the list.
A notable addition to this year’s list was Lake Forest-based Forge coming in at No. 20. The agency surged 68% to $6.4 million in revenue last year and grew its local headcount from 14 to 20.
“The increase came by staying strategic, adaptive, and always thinking ahead,” founder and CEO Matthew Givot said. “We were able to navigate through challenges both internally and externally with our clients before they happened.”
SCS in Costa Mesa maintained its No. 4 ranking despite reporting a 14% drop in revenue to $48 million. The company also cut a large chunk of its local and company-wide staff count. Orange County-based staff fell to 16, compared to 26 a year ago.
Irvine-based Healthcare Success, which captured 19% revenue growth to $13 million, said it focused on larger, multi-location businesses in 2024.
Largest Grower
RadioActive Media’s leap to No. 12 was thanks to the growing audience for audio marketing over the last few years, “especially in the podcast sector,” according to President Steve Pollak.
Founded in 2008, the Orange-based company’s work includes advertising on small podcasts to national radio campaigns with high-profile endorsements, according to its website.
“The increase is due to the effectiveness of our audio strategies, to where our (clients) dramatically increased their ad spends,” Pollak told the Business Journal.
“This is (also) due to the ever-growing amount of new celebrity and specialty podcasts that have been launched. It was most evident after the most recent presidential election, and how influential podcasts were in the outcome,” he said. Pollak added that younger listeners are currently the largest audience segment.
Keeping Pace with the Rollercoaster
“2024 was a rollercoaster of a year yet we finished strong,” Casanova//McCann’s Ingrid Smart told the Business Journal.
Ranked No. 7, Casanova//McCann reported annual revenue of $26.5 million for 2024, up 1.9% from 2023.
CEO Smart said that some clients tightened their budgets significantly at the start of the year and later they faced uncertainty “waiting for the elections results.”
Traffik, No. 9, said that retention via new programs was a key initiative to last year’s revenue increase.
The Irvine-based firm said revenue reached $20 million in 2024, up 25% from the year before.
“Clients are realizing that if they want to keep pace with today’s consumers, they need to provide content, products and services at the same speed of consumption,” Chief Executive Anthony Trimino said. “Agencies like ours were modeled for it and continue to adapt to the new ‘I want it now’ generation.”
UPDATE: The story has been modified to reflect new revenue information for Innocean USA. Due to wrong information provided to the Business Journal, the 2024 revenue figures were incorrect.
