Media 100

The WARC Media 100 is a ranking of the world’s most awarded campaigns and companies for media. It compiles the results of award shows that ran the year prior to its publication (e.g. the 2020 rankings reflect the results of award shows that ran in 2019).

The Media 100 has run since 1999 (formerly part of the Gunn Report) and sits alongside two other rankings: the WARC Creative 100 (formerly the Gunn Report), and the WARC Effective 100 (formerly the WARC 100) which has ranked effectiveness since 2014.

To compile the WARC Media 100, we track different advertising competitions around the world – all of them require entrants to show the impact of media on the campaign. Campaigns (and the brands and agencies behind them) are awarded points based on the prizes they win in those competitions.

The WARC Media 100 methodology follows the approach of the WARC Effective 100 methodology (previously the “WARC 100”), which was developed in consultation with an independent third party: Douglas West, professor of marketing and programme director at Kings College, London.

Each year, the award shows tracked to compile the WARC Rankings are reviewed to ensure that they reflect the needs of the industry and fulfil the purpose of the Rankings. To determine the most prestigious and rigorous shows, WARC Rankings conducts the following global research:

1. We survey senior planners, strategists and creatives, asking them to tell us the global and regional shows they regard as the most prestigious and rigorous.
2. We speak to an Advisory Board made up of industry leaders from advertising agencies, media agencies, consultancies and brands, who provide their expert opinion and independent guidance to ensure the rankings remain current, relevant and service the needs to the marketing communications industry.

Based on this consultation with the industry, shows are selected and weighted between 1 and 5 - this is an assessment of how 'hard' the competition is to win, and how prestigious the award is.

To produce this weighting, WARC Rankings has developed a calculation that takes into account a number of factors, including:

a. Industry perception

It is widely held within the industry that some competitions are harder or more prestigious than others. To reflect this, WARC Rankings uses the results of the survey and advisory board consultation to feed into the competition weighting.

b. The level of 'potential' competition

In theory, competitions or categories that are open to a wider 'pool' of campaigns will be harder to win than competitions that limit the size of the pool. So, for example, a global competition will usually be harder to win than a single-market competition. Or a show that is open to all types of marketing activity will be harder to win than a show that is only open to, say, digital marketing campaigns.

To reflect this, WARC Rankings takes into account how much of the global advertising market each competition represents. It is able to do this using WARC's comprehensive adspend data resources, which include analysis by channel and by geography.

The exact calculation is proprietary to WARC Rankings and, to avoid prejudicing entries to future competitions, we cannot reveal the weightings assigned to competitions.

Most of the awards schemes under consideration have a single Best in Show (or Grand Prix) winner per category, as well as a broader group of Gold, Silver and Bronze winners. We assign Award Points on a range from 10-2 (see table at right).

For schemes that do not run a Gold/Silver/Bronze scheme, we have adapted this points scheme to reflect their structure.

Award schemes under consideration vary greatly in terms of size. In order not to over-reward campaigns that have won many awards at a single scheme over those winning awards in multiple schemes, we have capped the number of Award Points a single campaign can win at a single awards scheme at 10. Grand Prix wins are exempt from the cap.

Non-campaign awards in these competitions (for example, 'Agency of the Year') are not included.

For each competition in which a campaign wins, its Award Points are multiplied by the Competition Weighting to produce a score.

For example, if a campaign wins a Silver in a competition with a weighting of 3, it will score 12 (4 Award Points x 3 weighting).

Many campaigns win awards in multiple competitions. So, a campaign's final score in WARC Media 100 is the sum of all the scores it has achieved in different competitions. Where the same campaign has been awarded at different competitions under different campaign titles, a generic campaign name has been used for all of these entries.

Once the scores for campaigns have been calculated, it is possible to assign points to the organisations behind them – both on the client and agency side.

The scores that have been generated for every campaign in the database are assigned to both an agency and a brand. This information is based on publicly released data, such as the winners' lists published by awards organisers.

This allows WARC Rankings to build rankings of individual agencies, agency networks, agency holding companies, brands and advertisers.

These rankings reflect the points generated from all campaigns in the database, not just the top 100 campaigns in the WARC Media 100.

As with campaign scores (see above), there is a cap of 10 Award Points (equivalent to two Grand Prix) that a brand or agency can win from a single campaign in a single competition.

In addition, the overall Award Points a single brand or agency can win from a single awards scheme (i.e. from all its winning entries in one competition) at 20. This is because a small number of competitions in the database award a very large number of prizes, making it possible for agencies or brands eligible for those competitions to pick up a lot of points from a single award scheme. This is unfair on agencies or brands ineligible to enter those competitions (for example, if the competition is in a local market and not open to entries from outside that market).

As with campaign scores, all Award Points are multiplied by the relevant Competition Weighting to produce the scores for agencies and brands.

Note: ownership structures of agencies and brands reflect the situation in January 2020; this may differ from the approach to ownership of individual award shows.

Contributing agencies

Agencies listed as 'contributing agencies' for a campaign in the database are awarded half the Award Points assigned to 'primary agencies' for the same campaign (i.e. 1 for Bronze, 2 for Silver, 3 for Gold, 5 for Grand Prix, with a points cap of 5 for a single campaign in any competition).

WARC Rankings has used the information released by awards schemes to determine which agencies are classed as 'primary agencies' and which are classed as 'contributing agencies'.

Date range

The WARC Media 100 includes only those awards handed out during the previous calendar year. So, the 2020 rankings refer to campaigns awarded in the 2019 shows.

Public data

All awards information, including lists of winners and details of judging criteria, is based on data that is in the public domain, whether through public, free-to-access web pages, press releases or other information for the media.

Campaign locations

The location assigned to individual campaigns is based on the location in which the campaign ran. If global, the location is where the campaign originated. The location of the primary agency is assumed to be the location of the original idea behind the campaign.

Translations

Wherever possible, English versions of each campaign name have been obtained, whether by contacting the original awards scheme directly to obtain a translated version of results, or by using a translation service. Where the same campaign has been awarded at different competitions in different languages, the English version of the campaign title has been used.