Digiday+ Research: Marketers reflect on what they consider a successful 2024

That’s according to a Digiday+ Research survey conducted among 50 brand, retailer and agency professionals toward the end of this year.

Marketers told Digiday that their revenues were up this year compared with 2023. Nearly two-thirds of brand, retailer and agency pros (65%) said that their companies’ 2024 revenues were up, and one-quarter (25%) said that their revenues were down this year.

More specifically, 24% of marketers told Digiday that their 2024 revenues were up between 11% and 25% compared with 2023 — which is a significant jump. This group of respondents made up the largest in this category in Digiday’s survey. Marketers who said their revenues were up between 1% and 10% made up the next-largest group, at 22%.

Just 12% of brands, retailers and agencies said their revenues were down between 1% and 10% in 2024 compared with 2023, and an even fewer 8% said their revenues were down between 11% and 25%. Ten percent of marketers said their 2024 revenues were about the same as they were in 2023.

With so many marketers reporting higher revenues in 2024 than they did in 2023, it’s no surprise that the group also said they consider this year to have been a successful one. Sixty-four percent of brand, retailer and agency pros told Digiday that they agreed that their companies had a successful year in 2024. Just 22% said they disagreed.

Digging a bit deeper into the numbers, it’s worth noting that the largest group of respondents to Digiday’s survey fell into the “strongly agree” category. A full third of brands, retailers and agencies (33%) said they strongly agreed that their companies had a successful year this year. Further, the second-largest group of respondents are those who said they somewhat agree their companies had a successful year (31% of marketers said this).

Just 12% of marketers said they disagreed somewhat that their companies had a successful year in 2024, and 10% disagreed strongly.

Despite all of this though, Digiday’s survey found that a significant percentage of marketers said this year that the economy hurt their companies’ performance. Thirty-eight percent of brand, retailer and agency pros said they agreed that the economy hurt their companies in 2024 — a bigger percentage than those who said they disagreed (33% of marketers said this).

Marketers’ feelings about the economy in 2024 fell toward the middle of the scale, rather than at one extreme end or the other, though. Thirty-one percent of marketers told Digiday that they agreed only somewhat that economic trends hurt their performance in 2024, and 21% said they disagreed somewhat that the economy hurt them this year. Twenty-nine percent said they neither agreed nor disagreed.

In the end, though, the economy didn’t appear to make a huge dent for marketers in 2024, especially since many were able to grow their staff this year. Nearly half of brand, retailer and agency pros (45%) told Digiday that the size of their companies’ full-time staff increased since the start of the year. More than a third (38%) said the size of their staff stayed the same in 2024, and just 17% said their staff decreased this year.

For most of the marketers who said their full-time staff did grow this year, however, the growth appears to have been on the smaller side. Thirty-eight percent of brands, retailers and agencies said their full-time staff increased only somewhat during 2024. Just 7% said their staff increased significantly.