UM Canada ranks among the most “dominant” media agencies in the world, according to this year’s edition of RECMA’s Diagnostics report.

RECMA’s “quali-scores” are based on points awarded for strength in 19 qualitative measures, including new business balance, competitiveness in pitches, leadership stability, client portfolio and expertise in specialized areas like data and technology. A score between 8 and 11 is considered “good” and 12 to 19 is considered “high.” A score of 20 or above is considered “dominant,” a status achieved by only 64 of the over 700 media agencies RECMA analyzed.

UM Canada’s 24 points put it among those “dominant” agencies, even though its score is down slightly from the 26 points RECMA assigned the agency for the first half of the year.

UM’s quali-score has also risen by 16 points since 2018. That puts it among the agencies whose scores have grown the most since 2018 in the top 16 global markets, behind Mediacom South Africa and Initiative Australia, whose scores each grew by 17 points.

Other agencies hitting a score of 24 were Havas Peru, Mediacom U.K., Carat Spain, OMD Greece, Mindshare China and UM Malaysia. Agencies that surpassed that mark include Initiative Chili and UM Mideast at 25; Initiative Mexico, Havas France and Mediaplus Germany at 26; OMD Russia and Australia at 27; PHD New Zealand at 28; and Wavemaker Italy at 29.

Globally, IPG Mediabrands owns 28% of global agencies classified as “dominant,” followed by Dentsu and Omnicom at 18% each and GroupM at 17%. By network, Initiative had nine dominant agencies, followed by OMD at 8, UM and Carat at 7 and Havas at 6.

Outside of the major networks, RECMA also called out Cossette Media for being among the six independent agencies with the highest quali-scores globally.