Agency Performance Review 2026: We graded 22 agency networks

Campaign Asia-Pacific has published its 2026 Agency Performance Reviews, an in-depth analysis and assessment of 22 leading ad agencies from across the industry. Using submission data, desk research, leadership calls, and context from Campaign's journalism, each agency has been studied and evaluated by the editorial team over the last quarter.

2025 was one of the most disruptive years in recent memory for the agency landscape. Omnicom's takeover of Interpublic and the restructures that followed dominated headlines, but other shops were also navigating their own reorganisations. Talent was fighting for a shrinking pool of jobs as mass layoffs and a hiring slowdown became the norm. We’ve changed our grading system (more on that below), but the top-tier group indicates a standout year despite those headwinds. Middle is where many agencies sit—good to adequate. Bottom third agencies had a challenging year; the reviews reflect the work they need.

Thank you to all the agencies that participated despite the time crunch that 2025 was.

We hope this is a useful way to distil the key moments of the year and understand the shape of the industry going forward.

The Agency Performance Reviews are live for Knowledge subscribers for a full month before moving behind the Information tier on May 17. 

Further analyses will follow in the months ahead.

—Nikita Mishra, Editor, Campaign Asia-Pacific. 

What's changed this year

For the better part of a decade, Campaign Asia-Pacific's Agency Report Cards assigned every agency a letter grade, an academic shorthand that gave the industry a legible benchmark. This year, that changes. The 2026 edition, rechristened the Agency Performance Review, swaps numerical scores and letter grades with a tiered system: Top, Middle, and Bottom third.

A B+, B or B- in the old system could mean many things, but in the new system, a Top-Middle- or Bottom-third placement more adequately reflects how agencies sit relative to peers evaluated under the same criteria in the same year. It removes the absolute score and places an underperformer within a competitive subset.

We also listened to agency feedback on the process. The consistent feedback from agencies across the region was that the submission process was onerous for teams already stretched across one of the world's most fragmented markets. So, we went back to basics with a streamlined submission form with word limits, showing what counts, but not everything, built around metrics we'd use.

The format has evolved accordingly. This is no longer a “punitive report card,” as one agency executive put it in our feedback calls. This year, it’s a performance review focused on high-level indicators across areas like business performance, innovation, standout work, management, and DEI and sustainability. Agency strengths and challenges are exposed in key performance areas where we identify how they compare to other agencies in the same criteria, in the top, middle, or bottom third. Reviews for agencies that did not submit are based on publicly available information.

The field, at a glance

We cover 22 agencies, out of which 13 are creative networks and 9 media agencies. The distribution is roughly even with 8 in the Top third, 7 in the Middle, and 7 in the Bottom.

A direct apples-to-apples comparison on agency performance is hard, given the methodology shift. But mapping 2026 tiers against two years of historical scores and the letter grading bares clear trends.

The individual reviews for all 22 agencies are below.