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MediaCom North has reported its largest year of revenue and headcount growth, after a surge in new business wins.

The agency said it hired 128 people in the past year, and added £130m in new-business billings over the past 18 months, as well as achieving organic growth from direct-to-consumer online businesses, such as We Buy Any Car, TopCashback, Hillarys and Tombola.   

Among the new appointments, 61 were within MediaCom Manchester, while 30 were for its Google Practice, which offers clients a “one-stop shop” to navigate the Google ecosystem in direct competition with digital agencies such as Jellyfish, Croud and Brainlabs.

The MediaCom North group, which also includes the digital product studio Code Computerlove and creative agency Cheetham Bell, now has 400 staff at offices in Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham. In 2022, MediaCom’s Manchester businesses are moving to a WPP campus in Manchester’s Enterprise City.

MediaCom North Group chief operating officer Paul Cooper said the strong growth was due to the strength of online businesses and commerce, with several start-ups setting up in the north, as well as the agency’s focus on digital.

“While we can attribute our achievement to the continued expansion of our expertise and capabilities, the exponential shift to dotcom commerce in the past 18 months has also been significant to us,” Cooper said.

“We have long been a digital first agency and that coupled with our expertise building D2C and dotcom businesses means we have been perfectly placed to grow through the huge consumer shift to digital we have seen in the last 18 months.” 

Nicola Marsh, MediaCom North's managing director and head of its Google Practice UK, added: “Our first of its kind Google Practice has had a phenomenal start.

"We’ve done some fantastic work so far and, if we look at the traditional marketing funnel, one of our biggest wins is about how we are operating within the consideration phase and how we are using data to segment audiences and target more efficiently, delivering profitable growth.”