What you will find in the article:
- Zenith secured the highest volume of new business in the Czech Republic.
- The reallocation of L’Oréal’s budget significantly helped Zenith.
- OMD and Knowlimits took second and third place.
- A total of 39 tenders and client transfers were reviewed.
- Retained accounts accounted for 31 per cent of the total investment volume.
The media agency Zenith (Publicis) recorded the highest growth in new business in the first half of 2026. It was followed by OMD (Omnicom) and Knowlimits (an independent agency). This is according to the new COMvergence report: New Business Barometer 1H 2026. Rounding out the top five agencies that performed best in terms of new business in the first half of the year are PHD (Omnicom) and Spark Foundry (Publicis).
The first half of the year was significantly influenced by L’Oréal’s shift of a personal care budget worth USD 20 million (approx. CZK 425 million) from Wavemaker (WPP Media) to Zenith. This was the largest client switch during the period under review, which significantly benefited both Zenith and the Publicis Media group.
From the perspective of agency networks, Publicis Media secured the largest volume of new business in the first half of the year. It was followed by Omnicom Media and Dentsu.
Other tenders of significant volume involved Tchibo, Pivovary Staropramen, EP Energy (epet) and Dyson. OMD retained the first three of these accounts, whilst UM (Omnicom) managed to retain the last one.
MediaGuru.cz has been granted permission by COMvergence to publish only the TOP 5 agencies and TOP 3 agency networks, which is why we are not publishing the full rankings.
The rankings include the value of both newly acquired and retained client budgets. For newly acquired accounts, the budget values are based on estimates of media investment for 2026. For lost clients, estimates for 2025 are used for the first half of the year and estimates for 2026 for the second half of the year, so that the results better reflect the volume of budgets that the agency actually managed during the collaboration.
The data is sourced from the COMvergence database. Estimates of net media investment combine Nielsen’s 2025 figures for offline media, which COMvergence further adjusts using its own coefficient, with its own estimates of digital investment based on the share of digital media by category and advertiser.
In the first half of the year, media planning worth USD 58 million (approximately CZK 1.23 billion) was reviewed on the Czech market as part of 39 tenders and client switches. Contracts retained amounted to USD 18 million, representing 31 per cent of the total volume of media investments reviewed.
Source: mediaguru.cz