New Rebellion's benchmark of 721 Australian businesses puts the average marketing agency at 59th of 81 sectors, behind fast food chains, wine retailers, cafes and vet clinics. The shortfall sits in Brand & Positioning and Conversion Efficiency, not the technical dimensions.
The Take: Marketing agencies sell brand clarity, conversion discipline and retention systems to every client except themselves. Run our benchmark on 700+ other Australian companies and the average agency lands 59th of 81 sectors, behind the burger chains, the cellar doors and the vet clinics they'd happily pitch a growth plan to. Our model is not the problem here. The industry's own house is.
We built this benchmark to answer a simple question for Australian owners: how does your marketing actually compare to the market rather than to a claim someone made up in a slide deck. Every company gets the same treatment, whether it sells insurance, sells burgers or sells marketing itself. That last group is where the numbers get uncomfortable.
How Do Marketing Agencies Rank on Their Own Marketing?
Weighed against 700+ other Australian companies on our composite scale, the average marketing agency in our sample landed at 61.2, placing 59th of 81 sectors.
That is not a rounding error. It sits 6.6 points behind Fast Food & QSR (67.8, 19th) and 5.6 points behind Wine & Spirits Retail (66.8, 26th). It trails Cafes & Coffee Chains. It trails Veterinary Clinics. Six agencies made our sample, from network shops like Ogilvy Australia and The Monkeys (Accenture Song) down to independents. Even the strongest of the six, Ogilvy Australia at 70.7, only just cracks the top third of the ladder. The weakest, at 51.2, sits closer to the bottom of the whole field than to the top of its own patch.
Australia's marketing agencies land 59th of 81 sectors on our own benchmark, behind the burger chains, the cellar doors and the vet clinics they would happily pitch a growth plan to.
Six companies is a small sample and we say so plainly. It is directional rather than definitive. One more agency added to the field could shift the mean a point in either direction. A gap this wide to the top of the ladder would not close on the back of one extra entry.
Which Local Businesses Are Beating the People Selling You Marketing?
Sit with that for a second. A burger chain, a bottle shop and a vet clinic are outdoing the companies whose entire product is marketing results. It stops looking strange once you see where the shortfall actually lives, criterion by criterion, rather than in the single composite.
Agencies clear the national mean on the two technical criteria and fall short on the four commercial ones. The tagging setup is fine. The tracking is fine. Where the model breaks is Brand & Positioning, the criterion that is, on paper, the entire pitch deck. A shop that cannot hold a distinct position for its own name is trying to sell a client a position it has not built at home.
Where the Agency Model Actually Breaks Down
This lines up with a pattern the wider trade already talks about without ever putting a hard figure on it. A 2023 national survey of Australian agencies by growth consultancy New Business Methodology, run in partnership with SI Partners for the OUCH! Factor report, found the average creative shop respondent would need $8.7 million in additional revenue to recoup the cost of a year of pitching, against $826,000 for the average media shop respondent (AdNews). The same survey put payback time at close to 32 months for creative shops versus three months for media shops.
Run that math through our findings and the shortfall on Brand & Positioning and Conversion Efficiency stops being a mystery. A shop pouring its strongest hours into unpaid pitch decks for someone else's brand has fewer hours left over for its own. New business becomes the growth plan. Referrals become the pipeline. A clear position, a measured funnel and a retention motion at home get pushed down the list because none of them are billable this week.
We covered the accountability gap on the client side of this relationship back in May, and looked at the build-versus-buy call directly earlier in the year. This finding sits underneath both. Anyone weighing an agency retainer against bringing the function in house now has a fair question to ask before signing.
Methodology
These figures come from New Rebellion's proprietary dataset: 721 Australian companies assessed as at April 2026 across 81 sectors on the six-criteria model we apply to every business in Hub, our marketing scorecard. The criteria are Digital Maturity, Acquisition Performance, Conversion Efficiency, Retention & Loyalty, Brand & Positioning and Data & Tracking, weighted per sector and blended into a single composite out of 100. Full method is documented at How We Score. The Marketing & Creative Agencies sample (n=6) is smaller than most sectors in the dataset and should be read as directional rather than definitive. The 81-sector ranking and the national mean draw on the full assessed field.
Our take: this is not an argument against hiring an agency. Plenty of Australian shops outdo the companies they work for, and the strongest name in our sample, Ogilvy Australia, sits comfortably above the national mean. It is an argument for asking one question before you sign. If a shop wants a fee to fix your positioning or your conversion path, ask what its own numbers look like on the same two fronts first. If you want to see where your business sits against the market before that conversation happens, run it through Hub.
Frequently asked questions
How is New Rebellion's benchmark calculated?
Each company is assessed 0-100 across six weighted criteria using observed signals, public data and structured research, then blended into a single composite. Weights vary by sector. Full detail sits at How We Score.
Do all marketing agencies rank badly on this benchmark?
No. Six agencies appear in the current sample and their marks range from 51.2 to 70.7. Ogilvy Australia sits well above the national mean of 63.8. The average across the small sample is 61.2, which is directional given the size of the group rather than a verdict on any single shop.
Why do agencies do well on the technical side but poorly on positioning?
The technical criteria reward the setup a shop is naturally equipped to build for itself: tagging, analytics and the underlying site infrastructure. Positioning and conversion reward a distinct market stance and a measured path to revenue, which is harder to prioritise internally when billable client work and unpaid pitch work both compete for the same hours.
How often does this benchmark refresh?
New Rebellion rescans and reassesses companies on a rolling basis as new information becomes available. This dataset reflects the field as at April 2026. Check Benchmarks for the latest published averages by sector.