Margins and profitability in activities of advertising agencies

Activities of advertising agenciesNACE 73.110

87 Norwegian companies in this industry. The median company kept 1.7 % of every krone.

36 % of the companies in this industry posted a negative operating result that year.

The distribution

What companies in the industry earned

One tenth of companies fell below -9.6 %, and one tenth above 11.8 %. That is the real spread in the industry, not an average.

Top against weakest third

Top third
9.4 %
Weakest third
-5.5 %
Spread
15 percentage points
Equity ratio
21.0 %median of 85

Size

Profitability by size

Profitability by size
RevenueCompaniesMedian operating margin
5 to 20 m240.9 %
20 to 100 m381.8 %
over 100 m202.6 %

Companies are split into revenue bands, with the median margin in each. Bands with fewer than ten companies are omitted, because the median becomes too unstable to show.

Public contracts

Who in the industry wins public contracts

52 of 87 companies in the industry have won at least one public contract since 2022, that is 59.8 %.

Those that win have median revenue of 29.5 m kr, against 34.7 m kr for those that do not. That is 0.8× as much. Note that this describes who wins, not evidence that contracts make companies large; large companies also find it easier to bid.

The 140 contracts we find come most often from these buyers.

  • Norsk Tipping AS9
  • Nasjonalbiblioteket6
  • Integrerings- og mangfoldsdirektoratet (IMDi)6
  • Medietilsynet6
  • Entur AS5

Contracts come from Doffin and TED. Our collection is not complete, and TED covers only contracts above the EEA threshold, so the figures are a floor and not a full count. We say what we find, not what exists.

Questions and answers

Common questions about activities of advertising agencies

What is a normal operating margin in activities of advertising agencies?
The median company kept 1.7 % of every krone. That means half of the 87 companies in the sample were above it, and half below.
What separates the best from the weakest in activities of advertising agencies?
The top third kept 9.4 % of every krone, against -5.5 % for the weakest third. The spread is 15 percentage points, and that is within the same industry, the same country and the same year.
How many companies are there in activities of advertising agencies in Norway?
We hold filed accounts for 87 Norwegian companies on this industry code with at least one million kroner in revenue. The real number is higher, since dormant and very small companies are excluded.
How many are loss-making in activities of advertising agencies?
36 % of the companies in the sample posted a negative operating result.
How large is a typical company in activities of advertising agencies?
Median revenue is 33.1 m kr. Half of the companies fall between 13.9 m kr and 74.7 m kr.
How much do public contracts matter in activities of advertising agencies?
52 of 87 companies, that is 59.8 %, have won at least one public contract since 2022. They have median revenue of 29.5 m kr, against 34.7 m kr for the rest.

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Related industries

Other industries in the same group

Method. 87 companies registered on industry code 73.110 (Activities of advertising agencies) with filed accounts and at least one million kroner in revenue. The figures come from the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and are public. Operating margin is operating profit divided by operating revenue.

Each company appears with the most recent accounts we hold for it. For the great majority that is the 2024 filing. Around eight per cent had already filed for 2025 when we collected, and for those the 2025 figures apply. We therefore write "latest accounts" rather than naming a single year.

We show one cross-section and no trend line. Our database has broad coverage for the most recent accounting year, but only a small and non-random sample for earlier years. A curve over time would therefore measure who we happened to collect, not what happened in the industry.

Companies with under one million in revenue are excluded, because dormant limited companies would otherwise pull the median down. We do not publish an industry page until we hold at least 30 companies.

This is a description of an industry, not a ranking of companies. We name no individual company here.

Ohmsyn is built by Erik Harry Høydal.