• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, March 1, 2017

A former research and business development director at RECMA, Olivier Gauthie is now giving the media agency tracker some competition with a company of his own called COMvergence.

Gauthier, a 14-year RECMA veteran founded the company last year and just issued the firm’s first annual round up (for 2016) of new business activity among holding company media shops. (RECMA issued a similar report a few weeks ago.)

COMvergence plans to do quarterly updates.

While RECMA focuses on media agency performance, Gauthier stresses his firm “goes beyond media,” and will issue reports about creative agencies, digital shops (both creative and media) and on different topics, such as mergers and acquisitions and agency talent.

A report on the top 25 U.S. creative agencies’ new business performance will be issued in May or June, Gauthier said.  

Separate talent reports will track both U.S. and global agencies and their C-level leadership teams, including profiles of existing teams and movements of individuals as they get promoted or move to new assignments at other agencies.

The company’s “New Business Barometer” report for full-year 2016 provides an analysis of 900-plus major media pitches and account moves completed during the year 2016 at global, regional and local levels. The report covers 12 key countries: USA, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, India, China, and Australia.

Country and global agency rankings are provided based on total new business results, including new client wins, pitches resulting in retention of clients, minus losses.

Per the report, the top media agency network last year was PHD with $2.6 billion in total new business. Rounding out the top-5 ranked agencies were Hearts & Science ($2 billion); Zenith ($1.7 billion); Carat ($1.2 billion), and Starcom ($1.05 billion).

Rounding out the top-10 spots were OMD ($1.03 billion); UM ($988 million); Mindshare ($889 million); Havas Media ($761 million), and Maxus ($581 million).

Holding company Omnicom Media Group was top-ranked ($5.373 billion), followed by Publicis Media ($2.524 billion); Dentsu Aegis Group ($1.666 billion); Havas Media ($872 million); Mediabrands ($692 million), and GroupM (-101 million).

The report noted that GroupM’s loss of Volkswagen and AT&T were key factors in its sixth place finish among the major groups.