GumGum tops IPA Digital Media Owners Spring 2025 Survey

In the survey, which details which media owners deliver the highest levels of service, and which have shown a commitment to continually improving their digital standards, 91.8% of respondents said that their overall experience of working with GumGum was a good one. GumGum was closely followed by Blis (89.3%), and The Guardian (87.5%).

While GumGum led overall and among Ad Networks/Exchanges, DSP and Sales Houses, Snap was top among Online Pure Plays and The Guardian was the best-performing Crossover Media Owner.

Other key findings:

• Six other media owners had an overall score of 80% or above: Quantcast (85.3%), Snap (83.6%), Mail Metro Media (81.7%), Global (81.5%), Pinterest (81.4%), and The Sun/Times/Sunday Times - News UK (80.6%).
• In addition to leading the overall ranking, GumGum was named best for ‘Professionalism in dealing with dispute resolution’, ‘Delivery of innovative, creative solutions’, ‘Ease of sales force contact’ and ‘Understanding of the context the agency operates in and supporting achievement of objectives’.
• Blis also topped four individual categories (‘Quality of response to brief’, ‘Understanding of own products’, ‘Engendering a real sense of agency/media owner partnership’, and ‘Communication of direct contact with clients’).
• Global led two categories (‘Understanding of client strategies and objectives’ and ‘Demonstration of how cross-media opportunities can be exploited’), while The Sun/Times/Sunday Times - News UK topped ‘Regularity of constructive sales force contact’ and Pinterest was best for ‘Proactive communication of new opportunities’.
• Snap was the most broadly improved media owner with increases of 10 percentage points or more across six different categories, while Global and Google (incl. YouTube) improved by the same margin across five rankings.

Says Amy Lawrence, Digital Partner, EssenceMediacom & Chair of the IPA Digital Marketing Group: “It is vital that agencies understand which media owners are providing a consistently excellent service and are committed to working together effectively. I’m therefore delighted to see such high standards across the board in the Spring 2025 IPA Digital Media Owners Survey. Particular congratulations must go to GumGum for topping the survey.”

The IPA Digital Media Owner Survey is released twice a year, in spring and autumn. Every January, agency members of the IPA Digital Media Group are asked to provide a list of their top trading partners from the previous year – no sensitive revenue data is shared. These individual lists are then aggregated to form a survey of the top 25 media owners for both the Spring and Autumn surveys of that year. Each year, there is a degree of churn in which vendors appear on the questionnaire and others, therefore, drop off. Featuring on the survey questionnaire is therefore a factor of scale, especially relative scale, rather than service levels.