The best-performing independent marketing agencies in the UK have been revealed in two landmark reports by The Drum.

Published online and as a commemorative book, the Top 100 Independent Agencies, sponsored by Workfront, celebrates the strongest agencies of their kind in the UK.

Agencies earned their place in this report based on three key factors: financial performance, recognition of excellence through award wins, and client satisfaction scores via RAR, the Recommended Agency Register.

Powering the financial data behind the top 100 is The Drum’s 2017 Independent Agencies Census, a comprehensive annual research project that benchmarks agencies’ business performance relative to their peers.

Taking the form of a detailed digital report, the Independent Agencies Census ranks agencies’ financial performance based on their size and location. Some 194 agencies took part in our research this year, and together they had a combined turnover of £1.5bn.

Much of this income was concentrated within the larger agencies with 100 staff members or more, but every staff size group we analysed observed significant positive growth.

This year, 80% of the companies that participated demonstrated positive turnover growth – up from 77% in our 2016 Census.

Unsurprisingly, London agencies dominate the makeup of the Census, with companies from the capital accounting for £926m worth of the entire group’s income and almost half of the total headcount (4,930 staff).

The full Census report contains granular financial metrics for each participating agency including turnover, turnover growth, turnover per head, gross profit percentage growth, and more.