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In the UK, creative and media agencies generated approximately £35.2 billion in GVA in 2024, with more than 23,000 registered agencies employing around 288,000 people. Total UK advertising investment then reached £46.7 billion in 2025 and is forecast to rise to approximately £50.5 billion in 2026. (Advertising Association) Ireland's wider advertising market reached approximately €1.7 billion in 2025. The 2025 IAPI Census also reported more than 3,000 people working across its member agencies, with retainers increasing to 36% of agency income and 21% of revenue coming from overseas clients. (Creative Communications Ireland) Those headline numbers sit across very different commercial models. A performance agency, PR consultancy, creative studio and media agency may compete for similar client budgets while developing quite different Sales, Marketing and client-management experience.
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In the UK, creative and media agencies generated approximately £35.2 billion in GVA in 2024, with more than 23,000 registered agencies employing around 288,000 people. Total UK advertising investment then reached £46.7 billion in 2025 and is forecast to rise to approximately £50.5 billion in 2026. (Advertising Association) Ireland's wider advertising market reached approximately €1.7 billion in 2025. The 2025 IAPI Census also reported more than 3,000 people working across its member agencies, with retainers increasing to 36% of agency income and 21% of revenue coming from overseas clients. (Creative Communications Ireland) Those headline numbers sit across very different commercial models. A performance agency, PR consultancy, creative studio and media agency may compete for similar client budgets while developing quite different Sales, Marketing and client-management experience.
In the UK, creative and media agencies generated approximately £35.2 billion in GVA in 2024, with more than 23,000 registered agencies employing around 288,000 people. Total UK advertising investment then reached £46.7 billion in 2025 and is forecast to rise to approximately £50.5 billion in 2026. (Advertising Association) Ireland's wider advertising market reached approximately €1.7 billion in 2025. The 2025 IAPI Census also reported more than 3,000 people working across its member agencies, with retainers increasing to 36% of agency income and 21% of revenue coming from overseas clients. (Creative Communications Ireland) Those headline numbers sit across very different commercial models. A performance agency, PR consultancy, creative studio and media agency may compete for similar client budgets while developing quite different Sales, Marketing and client-management experience.
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Agency & Media covers creative and advertising agencies, brand and design consultancies, digital and performance agencies, PR and communications, media planning and buying, content, social, production and specialist marketing businesses.
The sector is commercially varied. Some agencies sell retained strategic relationships, others fixed projects, media, production, specialist expertise or performance-linked work.
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In the UK, creative and media agencies generated approximately £35.2 billion in GVA in 2024, with more than 23,000 registered agencies employing around 288,000 people. Total UK advertising investment then reached £46.7 billion in 2025 and is forecast to rise to approximately £50.5 billion in 2026. (Advertising Association)
Ireland's wider advertising market reached approximately €1.7 billion in 2025. The 2025 IAPI Census also reported more than 3,000 people working across its member agencies, with retainers increasing to 36% of agency income and 21% of revenue coming from overseas clients. (Creative Communications Ireland)
Those headline numbers sit across very different commercial models. A performance agency, PR consultancy, creative studio and media agency may compete for similar client budgets while developing quite different Sales, Marketing and client-management experience.
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Sales Section Copy
Employers may be looking for someone who can:
• Qualify the opportunity before the pitch. Not every RFP represents a genuinely open decision, and senior creative, strategy and leadership time is expensive.
• Understand why the client is looking. A change of leadership, incumbent problem, capability gap or commercial pressure can tell you far more than the formal brief.
• Sell the actual agency. The team, thinking and level of senior involvement promised during the pitch need to exist after the win.
• Understand the pricing model. Retainer, project, media, performance and value-based arrangements create different risks and client expectations.
• Protect scope and margin. Growth is not useful if additional work, endless revisions or excessive senior involvement make the account uneconomic.
• Grow existing relationships intelligently. Account development is different from simply allowing more work to drift into the same fee.
The ability to say no is part of this too.
Experienced new-business people often become more selective about which pitches deserve the agency's time. They look at whether the opportunity is winnable, commercially sensible and aligned with what the agency is genuinely good at rather than treating every invitation as pipeline.
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Marketing Section Copy
The stronger Agency & Media marketers tend to:
• Make the agency's thinking visible. Specific insight and a clear point of view usually say more than a stream of generic agency content.
• Use work as evidence, not decoration. Good case studies explain the original problem, the decisions made and what changed as a result.
• Build credibility before a brief exists. Reputation, referrals, useful content and visible expertise can influence who gets invited into the room.
• Understand the agency's actual proposition. A broad list of capabilities rarely creates the same confidence as a clear reason to involve that particular agency.
• Work closely with New Business and Client Services. Agency Marketing should support the kinds of clients and assignments the business actually wants.
• Compete internally for time. Billable client work naturally takes priority, so marketers need to extract knowledge from busy specialists without depending on endless internal availability.
Internal Marketing can easily be pushed behind paid client work, despite being responsible for building the agency's own reputation and future pipeline.
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“Agency experience” can hide substantial differences in commercial capability.
Two New Business Directors may both have impressive pitch records.
One may build senior relationships, create preference before a formal brief, help shape the agency proposition and carefully qualify retained strategic work.
Another may predominantly respond to incoming RFPs, coordinate credentials and manage pitch processes once the opportunity is already defined.
Two Account Directors can also look almost identical on paper.
One may own the client relationship, account profitability, scope, pricing, resourcing, renewal and growth.
Another may lead delivery and client communication extremely well while commercial authority sits with a Client Services Director or agency owner.
And the agency model changes the experience again.
A performance-agency Account Director may become highly skilled at media economics, attribution, commercial reporting and explaining what is driving return.
A brand or creative Account Director may develop much stronger judgement around ambiguous briefs, subjective feedback, senior stakeholders and protecting a creative process.
PR develops another set of instincts around reputation, discretion and judgement under pressure, while media businesses can build much deeper expertise in audience value, trading and investment decisions.
The title tells us surprisingly little unless we also know what the client was buying and how the agency made money from it.
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Careers can begin in Business Development, account management, media sales or client services before progressing into New Business leadership, Client Services leadership, Commercial leadership or agency growth roles.
Progression is not simply about pitching bigger clients.
More experienced people tend to become better at judging which clients suit the agency, interpreting what sits behind an imperfect brief and protecting the relationship between client expectation, team capacity and commercial value.
Client Services can become particularly commercial at senior level.
The job may involve recognising scope creep early, having difficult conversations about fees, translating unclear feedback into useful decisions and helping clients explain the agency's value internally.
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Agency Marketing careers can begin across Content, PR, Events, Awards, Digital or Communications before broadening into proposition, reputation, thought leadership and new-business strategy.
The more senior role is rarely simply “market the agency harder”.
It involves understanding which work the agency wants more of, what differentiates it from competitors and which people or pieces of thinking are most likely to demonstrate that difference credibly.
Experience across agencies can also create strong cross-sector intelligence. People see how different organisations brief, approve, buy and measure Marketing, which can build valuable judgement much faster than a role exposed to one business alone.
At the same time, agency Marketing can be deceptively difficult. There may be no shortage of marketing opinions inside the business, while getting agreement on the agency's own positioning can be considerably harder than producing work for a client.
Roles Copy
New Business Leadership · Business Development · Client Services & Account Leadership · Account Management · Commercial & Growth Leadership · Media Sales · Partnerships & Sponsorship · Agency Marketing Leadership · Marketing Management · PR & Communications · Content & Thought Leadership · Performance & Digital Marketing · Events & Partnerships · Sales & Marketing Leadership
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For employers, we look beyond the obvious agency name and job title and spend time understanding the proposition, clients, pricing model, account economics and real commercial ownership behind someone's experience.
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For professionals, we help make sense of the experience you have built, what you are genuinely good at and where that might take you next.
