Research firm COMvergence has released its New Business Barometer for 2022, showing which agencies and holding companies fared the best after the year’s billions in media reviews concluded.

COMvergence came to its ranking by analyzing roughly 3,500 media reviews across 47 countries, totaling $32.2 billion USD in spending over 2022.

OMD topped the list with $2.38 billion USD in wins and $808 million USD in retentions, compared to $833 million USD in losses, for a net gain of $2.36 billion USD. Zenith was second with $1.07 billion USD in wins, $1.39 billion USD in retentions and $498 million USD in losses resulting in a net gain of $1.97 billion USD.

Mindshare was third ($1.59 billion USD in net wins), followed by Carat ($1.44 billion USD) and Spark Foundry ($1.32 billion USD). While Initiative ($1.29 billion USD) and PHD ($1.26 billion USD) rounded out the top seven, those agencies had the lowest total losses, at $277 million USD and $235 million USD, respectively.

At the holding company level, Publicis Media ranked first, with net new business of $4.8 billion USD. Omnicom Media Group was second with $3.8 billion USD and GroupM was third with $3.2 billion USD.

Of the total media spend reviewed by COMvergence, 14% was awarded to independent agencies. The average retention rate in 2022 was 35%, continuing a slow increase from previous years (33% in 2021 and 30% in 2020).

Despite there being a seeming increase in the number of media accounts decided at the global level, COMvergence’s analysis found that local pitches accounted for roughly 66% of media reviewed in 2022, up from 58% the year prior.

This year, COMvergence released its Pitch Predictor tool, which uses analytics to forecast which media accounts are likely to be put into review in the near future. Based on its findings – as well as the fact that $3.5 billion USD in media spend has already been reviewed in 2023, with $9 billion USD currently in play – COMvergence predicts total review activity this year to be at a similar level to 2022.