The Prolific North Top 50 Integrated Agencies 2025 list revealed

Today we can reveal Prolific North’s Top 50 Integrated Agencies list for 2025, the benchmark ranking for the North of England’s top-performing agencies.

Over the last decade, this Top 50 ranking has become widely regarded as the go-to guide for this thriving sector across the North.

A big thanks goes to Prolific North’s long-term research partners Mustard for independently compiling the list again this year. The ranking identifies the leading Northern integrated firms and is anchored on financial factors including balance sheets, turnover and pre-tax profit, as well as publicly available information.

Analysis

“The agency landscape this year shows continued growth and resilience. Whilst agencies are expanding and driving revenue, sustaining profitability has become more challenging,” says Robyn Mason, research manager at Mustard.

READ MORE: The North’s top agencies drive £568m growth burst – but profits sink 18% in tough market

Thanks to Mustard’s research, over the past week Prolific North has looked a little deeper into the data and discovered Prolific North’s Top 50 integrated agencies in 2025 are powering a £568m boom for the Northern economy – but pre-tax profits are shrinking considerably to 38.4m over the past year. That’s an 18% decline.

The total turnover of last year’s Top 50 stood at £497m, before climbing to £568m this year – a 14% increase year-on-year.

The latest data also shows that the total workforce across the Top 50 has increased from 3,842 last year to 3,965 – a modest but meaningful 3% rise that suggests agencies are investing in talent despite economic pressures. A decade ago, the average headcount at a Top 50 agency was just 57. Today, it stands at 75 – highlighting the sector’s expansion and the growing scale of leading Northern agencies.

READ MORE: A decade of the Top 50 Integrated Agencies – how the Northern agency landscape has changed 

Beyond the data, It’s worth remembering at this point that this is not a list that aims to find the biggest agency or necessarily the most profitable agency, but it uses instead a carefully considered algorithm – that has remained constant throughout the last few years – that seeks to identify the top agencies in a given year.

There has been a considerable amount of jostling for the top positions in recent years, and 2025 is no different.

So, the big reveal is finally here. Well done APS Group! The Cheadle-headquarted agency is Prolific North’s new number one integrated agency for 2025. Check out our recent interview with APS – and find out what’s driving the agency’s successes.

You may notice a major shift in the top 10 too as Drummond Central, based in Newcastle, slides into third place while Ride Shotgun has had a meteoric rise, climbing an impressive 18 places into seventh place and breaking into the top 10.

There were real standout performers elsewhere on the list too – congratulations to Aire Global (9th), Love Creative (13th), Workhouse (15th), Syn (20th), and TBWA\MCR (28th).

It’s fantastic to see four new entrants on this year’s list – well done to CNS Media (21st), Brandon Consultants (26th), Excite OOH (41st) and Edison Media (46th). Check out the full rankings for 2025 below…

The Prolific North Top 50 Integrated Agencies 2025