Digiday+ Survey: Agencies Think They Will Outperform Industry in 2023

84% of agency professionals told Digiday they agreed their companies would be successful in 2022. This is a very high figure given the current economic climate. Meanwhile, 74% agree that the agency business as a whole had a successful year. That’s still a lot, but it’s not like those who said that individual companies were successful last year. This shows that many agencies believe their business is doing better than the industry as a whole.

Looking at the data for 2023, the gap widens even further. 83% of agency professionals tell Digiday they agree they are optimistic about their companies’ prospects for 2023. Agencies, on the other hand, don’t think the industry is doing well. He said 70% of agency professionals agree they are optimistic about the prospects for his business as a whole for 2023.

Comparing this year’s survey results with last year’s survey results, there are some interesting trends to note. The percentage of agency professionals who say they are optimistic about their company’s prospects this year is actually down. By the end of 2022, 83% will say this. , compared to 93% at the end of 2021. Additionally, he told Digiday last year that 83% of agency professionals agreed he was optimistic about the industry’s outlook for 2022, compared to 70% in 2023.

Digging deeper into agency 2023 optimism, it becomes clear that the optimism agency professionals are experiencing in early 2023 is different from the optimism they experienced in early 2022.

Between DIGIDAY’s 2021 and 2022 year-end surveys, agency professionals alternated between “somewhat agree” and “strongly agree” that their company had a successful year. 48% of respondents strongly agreed that his company had a successful 2021, while 37% agreed. somewhat. This time, 38% of respondents strongly agreed that his company’s 2022 was a success, and 46% somewhat agreed. This marks a shift from the outright optimism felt in the industry a year ago.

Interestingly, agency professionals’ attitudes toward the industry as a whole did not change much from 2021 to 2022. The percentage of respondents who somewhat agree that the agency business has had a successful year rose slightly from 48% in 2021 to 51% in 2022. The percentage of those who strongly agree the industry has had a good year has fallen by one point, from 24% in 2021 to 23% in 2022.

Another interesting trend to note is that not a single respondent strongly disagreed with being optimistic about their company’s or industry’s outlook for 2022 or 2023.

Another notable difference between last year and this year is among agency professionals who strongly agree to be optimistic about the coming year. That percentage has dropped to 32% for him in 2023. A similar difference emerged when it came to agency optimism for the industry as a whole. Last year, 32% said they strongly agreed they were optimistic about his 2022 outlook for the agency business, but this year he dropped to 23%. .