Let’s see that clip again.
OC’s biggest ad agencies posted about a 13% gain in annual revenue last year, the second consecutive year of double-digit growth.
The 47 firms on this week’s Business Journal list combined for $1.5 billion in annual revenue, and the list’s two largest companies—No. 1, Advantage Marketing Partners in Irvine and No. 2, Innocean Worldwide Americas LLC in Huntington Beach—took in about 56% of that total.
Advertising employee growth in OC was more muted—up about 5% year-over-year to about 2,500 across the list—and total OC workers employed by the 47 agencies actually declined by 3%, to about 3,100. Some agencies, however, did not differentiate between the two categories.
Advantage Marketing Partners, a consortium of ad agencies and a division of Advantage Solutions, employs 873 in OC, a 21.7% decrease from 2015.
President of Marketing Jill Griffin attributed the decline in numbers to its shift to a “closest to the client” strategy, which calls for opening offices near client headquarters.
This year’s list is nearly identical in composition to last year—two companies dropped off and one, No. 28, Idea Hall in Costa Mesa, with $5.5 million in annual revenue, debuted.
About half the list—23 agencies—saw higher revenue, 10 were down, and five reported no change. Figures for nine others reflect Business Journal estimates.
Clients, Growth
List members saw growth in revenue and client base.
• Advantage Marketing Partners had about $592 million in 2016 revenue, nearly a 20% increase. Growth came in part by acquisitions: an ad agency in Chicago; a search marketing firm in Austin, Texas; and a brand identity and package design company in San Francisco.
“We deliver rich expertise in all key disciplines … by assembling a family of complementary agency offerings,” Griffin said in an email.
Advantage Marketing Partners’ clients include Heineken, Kroger, Tyson, Amazon, and Southwest Airlines and Griffin said it plans to buy more agencies “to scale faster and to add value in new sectors.”
• Innocean tabulated $274 million in revenue, up 7.5%. The advertising arm of Fountain Valley-based Hyundai Motor America Inc. employs 350, a 16.7% increase.
Two in-house agencies—No. 4, Agency Ingram Micro, owned by the technology distributor, and No. 5, Pacific Communications, part of Allergan PLC and which also works with other drugmakers—were flat on revenue or posted modest gains.
• Rauxa in Costa Mesa leapfrogged two spots to No. 3 with about $88 million in annual revenue, up 56%. President and Chief Executive Gina Alshuler said growth came from current clients Verizon and Vans and new ones, Alaska Airlines and TGI Fridays among them. The company has increased video content offerings and data science help for its clients.
Three firms report some changes to their make-up.
• Healthcare ad shop PrecisionEffect moved from Santa Ana to bigger digs in Costa Mesa—and jumped seven spots to No. 8, at about $28 million in revenue, a 38.5% hike.
• Casanova//McCann, which shares a parking lot with Rauxa, dropped “Pendrill” from its old name and replaced it with “McCann”—from its global ad network parent. It rose four spots to No. 10 with an estimated $25 million in revenue.
It was recently named “Hispanic creative and social media agency of record” for Carl’s Jr., a national account to be run from Costa Mesa, and it will work with its Detroit office on Hispanic creative and social media account for Chevrolet according to Chief Executive Ingrid Otero-Smart.
• Idea Hall, in addition to its list debut—testimony to its evolution into a “hybrid full-service branding, marketing and public relations agency,” said Chief Executive Rebecca Hall—also added seven new accounts, and expanded into new industries that include wine and spirits, travel and tourism, and technology.
The firm added two employees—not including a personal new arrival for Hall (see Insider item, page 3).
BrandingBusiness in Irvine, at No. 31 with a 2% uptick to $5.3 million in revenue, also reported recent wins, including Tevora, a Lake Forest-based information security business; international technology distributor Tech Data Corp. in Clearwater, Fla. and Hudson Pacific Properties Inc., a Los Angeles-based, publicly traded real estate investment trust.
