Digiday+ Research: Agencies carry worry about client budgets into 2025, but optimism is still strong

This is according to a Digiday+ Research survey of over 40 agency professionals conducted in Q4 2024.

Digiday’s survey found that, this year, agencies are wary about client budgets more than anything else. Forty-three percent of agency pros said that reduced client budgets will be the biggest challenge for the agency industry in 2025 — making that the biggest group of respondents by far.

Nineteen percent of agencies said scope creep will be the biggest challenge this year, marking the second-largest group of respondents, followed by 12% who said their biggest challenge will be video ad measurement and attribution.

Ten percent of respondents to Digiday’s survey chose the “other” answer option, listing challenges not included in our answer set. Fragmentation of specialty services was one challenge mentioned by a respondent, which is interesting to note considering the ongoing fragmentation on the social media side of marketing. Automation of digital media and digital ad measurement and attribution were also mentioned by respondents who chose the “other” answer option, as was privacy. And one respondent even combined the survey’s top two challenges, noting that “reduced client budgets showing up as scope creep” would be the industry’s biggest challenge this year.

Agencies’ worries for 2025 seem to be much of a continuation of their worries in 2024. Half of respondents to Digiday’s survey (50%) said that reduced client budgets were the biggest challenge faced by the industry last year, and 19% said the same of scope creep — making those the two biggest challenges for agencies last year as well.

In terms of the “other” responses agencies offered, Google’s algorithm was something brought up by respondents that was a particular challenge in 2024, and, my personal favorite response, “talk of stupid tariffs.”

None of this is to say that agencies are letting any of these challenges get in the way of their optimism for the industry this year. It’s quite the opposite, actually: The majority of agency pros told Digiday that last year was a successful year, and that this year will be a successful one too.

More than half of agency pros (55%) told Digiday that they agree that the agency industry had a successful year last year. Comparatively, barely more than a quarter (26%) disagreed.

Even the breakdown of that data echoes agencies’ overall optimism. Seventeen percent of agency pros said they agree strongly that the industry had a successful year last year, and 38% said they agree somewhat. Admittedly, significantly more agencies fall into the “agree somewhat” category than fall into the “agree strongly” one. But that 17% who said they agree strongly that last year was a successful one is especially noteworthy when compared with the mere 2% who disagreed strongly about the agency industry’s success in 2024.

And Digiday’s survey found that agencies are even more optimistic about this year than 2024. Just short of three-quarters of agency pros (74%) said they agree that they’re optimistic about the agency industry’s prospects in 2025. Just 9% disagreed.

What’s more, over a quarter of agency pros (26%) said they agree strongly that agencies will have a good year this year. Forty-eight percent said they agree somewhat — a higher percentage — but more than a quarter of survey respondents saying they have a strong feeling about agencies’ prospects this year is a clear indicator of the group’s optimism.

In comparison, just 7% of agency pros said they disagree somewhat that they’re optimistic for the industry this year, and an even smaller 2% said they disagree strongly.