Publicis has announced its full year results for 2024, with revenue climbing 5.8 per cent.
It also announced that it had given staff an average salary increase of 7 per cent, outstripping its revenue growth.
All of the French agency group’s key regions posted annual growth, with the US up 5.1 per cent, Europe up 5.4 per cent and Asia-Pacific up 6.3 per cent.
The company said South-East Asia was up by a high-single digit, after double-digit growth in Q4 2023, mainly driven by the Philippines and Malaysia. Australia and New Zealand posted mid-single-digit growth together on the quarter.
Its net revenue overtook WPP, with the French group raking in €13.97 billion (around AU$23 billion).
It was on that basis that the group’s CEO, Arthur Sadoun, said the results made it “the largest advertising holding company in the world in 2024”.
Naturally, the Omnicom-IPG merger (or acquisition, if you prefer) will see the new combined entity become the largest in the world.
“We are ending the year in the number one position across the board, growing three times faster than our holding company peers, and five times faster than the IT consultancies. We delivered industry-high financial ratios while stepping up the pace of our investments in AI and talent. Once again, we topped the charts in new business rankings,” added Sadoun.
“But even more importantly, we are accelerating on our status as a Category of One thanks to our unmatched 1st-party data capabilities, our connected media ecosystem, our creative firepower, and our 25,000 engineers, brought together through the Power of One. This makes us confident in significantly outperforming the industry in 2025 for the 6th year in a row.”
Publicis predicted revenue growth between 4-5 per cent in 2025, despite macroeconomic uncertainties, including US president Donald Trump’s trade tariffs. It also expects margins to improve above 18 per cent.
