In eighth place, TMW climbed five places from last year to become the only direct marketing agency in the top 10. The table was topped by advertising agency Mother.
The survey measures the quality of financial management of unlisted advertising, PR, direct marketing, media buying and digital agencies against eight financial benchmarks. TMW met six of those benchmarks.
Out of 50 companies ranked, nine were active in direct marketing.
The list included integrated agencies Rapier, which climbed from 19th last year to 16th, and Archibald Ingall Stretton, which shot up from 50th to 27th.
Billington Cartmell, which offers sales promotion and direct marketing, rose from 20th to 13th.
Bounty, the baby-focused marketing agency, returned to the privately owned list at 31 after its management buyout from Havas.
The report's author Bob Willott qualified the ranking as being based on figures from the period before the buyout.
Willott said that the figures illustrated a trend for direct agencies to show a "gentle improvement against other [marketing] sectors", but warned that they also showed the industry recovery has been slow.
"More privately owned marketing companies achieved consistent income growth and exceeded our 拢500,000 average operating profit threshold than last year, but the recovery has been slow and the recent industry recession has left its scars," he said.
"Less than one-third of the 50 companies had sufficient working capital to satisfy our fairly demanding criteria or had enjoyed income growth of at least 15% over a two-year period."
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