Media Management Services

The first-ever Wave for this category has been out since November 2024: The Forrester Wave: Media Management Services, Q4 2024. It published into a market whose organizing principle had just collapsed, the traditional marketing funnel, and it scores the agencies on what they built to replace it.

The first edition: The Forrester Wave: Media Management Services, Q4 2024

The Q4 2024 Wave, published November 13, 2024 and authored by VP, principal analyst Jay Pattisall, evaluates twelve of the most significant global media management services providers against twenty two criteria across current offering and strategy.

Pattisall, the same analyst who runs the creative services Wave, frames this market around the funnel's collapse. Buyers no longer move through neat awareness-to-purchase stages, and the agencies that win are the ones building for nonlinear purchase behavior, media that meets buyers inside whatever journey they are actually on.

The funnel's collapse is also a pricing story. The old model charged media commissions and fees against stage-based plans, and when the stages stopped describing reality, the pricing stopped surviving audits. The report's repeated emphasis on pricing flexibility and transparency, three of the confirmed placements carry maximum scores in that criterion, is the industry's public reckoning with its own commercial history.

The report's commercial advice to brands is the sharpest line in it: consider providers that "prioritize a mutually beneficial, outcomes-focused commercial model."

The two named Leaders and their different proofs

Dentsu took a Leader placement with the highest Strategy score in the field, and it was the only provider to receive the highest possible score in the Vision criterion. Its top scores run through Global Delivery Strategy, Pricing Flexibility and Transparency, Media and Advertising Operations, and Performance Media.

The pricing detail is the interesting one. Forrester credits Dentsu's pricing approach with "models to fund innovation and mutual agency/client benefit," which is the commercial-structure point the whole edition keeps circling. The fit verdict: "a good fit for brands aiming to make impact with media innovation, operational rigor, and client leadership at a global scale."

Omnicom Media Group took a Leader placement with 5 of 5 scores in eight criteria, including Martech and Adtech Implementation, Media Responsibility, Principal-Based Buying, Content Production, Broadcast Buying, Innovation, Partner Ecosystem, and Pricing Flexibility and Transparency.

OMG's citation runs on its Omni platform, the open operating system that carries audience intelligence from planning through buying into near-real-time creative. The reference customers' words are the money quote: "transparent business practices, trustworthy relationships, and strength of Omni technology."

A third provider holds a Leader placement that has not surfaced publicly, and this article assigns no names the record does not support.

The middle band where the category's future sits

Tinuiti, the largest independent full-funnel agency, announced a Strong Performer placement, and it was the only agency to receive the highest possible score in the Media Planning criterion, with 5 of 5 scores also in Measurement and Attribution and Pricing Flexibility and Transparency. Its stack, the TAPS planning process and the Bliss Point measurement suite, is the independent's answer to the holding companies' platforms.

DEPT entered the Wave for the first time, taking the highest possible score in Content Production on its AI-powered Lightspeed automation platform, and second-tier scores across a long list of adjacent criteria.

The middle band is where the category's argument is happening. The holding companies own the platforms. The independents own the measurement and the content automation. The scorecard grades both, and the buyer's real question is which half of that split their budget needs.

The independent's position deserves one more sentence. Tinuiti's maximum scores in media planning, measurement, and attribution are the criteria a brand most wants independent of the agency buying its media. An agency that plans, buys, and grades its own work is grading its own homework, and the scorecard's structure, rewarding both the integrated platforms and the independent measurement stack, leaves that conflict for the buyer to resolve.

The funnel the report buried

The framing deserves a close read, because it explains the entire services reset this Wave belongs to. The traditional funnel, awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty, was the media agency's pricing unit for decades. Its collapse means the deliverable changed: not impressions against stages, but outcomes against actual purchase behavior, however nonlinear.

Pattisall's outcomes-focused commercial model line is the same thesis his creative services Wave scored. Media and creative are converging into one outcomes market, and the agencies being scored in both Waves, Omnicom's groups above all, are the ones that rebuilt for it.

The honest limits of a first edition

First editions define more than they rank, and this one has the limits to prove it. Twelve providers, three Leaders, and only two of the three placements public. The record is a snapshot taken mid-consolidation, and the category's next edition will likely score a different field against different criteria, because the funnel's replacement is still being built.

There is also the sibling-scorecard effect to remember. Several providers in this Wave also appear in the marketing creative and content services Wave, and the same holding companies lead both. The tier in one scorecard is evidence about one service line, not about the group, and the distinction matters when the contract covers both.

Three questions for the post-funnel buyer

Which collapsed funnel are you actually paying against? If your commercial model still prices impressions against stages, the outcomes-focused Leaders will underprice you. Decide the model before the scorecard decides the vendor.

Who owns the measurement, the agency or you? Tinuiti's maximum scores sit in measurement and attribution. The Leader tier's sit in platform breadth. If independence of measurement matters, the middle band holds your fit, and the tier column will not say so.

What is in the pricing model besides the rate card? Dentsu's innovation-funding models and OMG's principal-based buying are different answers to the same question. Ask each vendor to explain how their commercial model behaves when your outcomes improve, and when they do not.

Forrester does not endorse any vendor named here, and tier placement should not be read as a recommendation to buy.

The adjacent shortlist item is Social Suites: eighty three percent of the marketing executives Forrester surveyed are actively trying to consolidate their social media tools, the demand-side reason this category exists as a suite rather than a collection of point tools.