WPP's Australian agency revenue fell 24% as fees to London rose 45%

WPP's Australian and New Zealand business lost a quarter of its advertising agency revenue in 2025 while sending 45% more to its London parent in service fees. Agency revenue fell from $251m to $191m, and fees paid to the UK parent rose from $51.8m to $75.2m, according to accounts filed with ASIC and first reported by Mumbrella.

On our calculation, those fees took 10.7% of the group's $700m revenue, up from 6.7% of $769m the year before.

Creative carried the fall

Total revenue fell 9%, or $69m. The agency line accounts for $60m of that.

The rest of the business moved far less. Media revenue slipped 1.5% to $402m, PR fell 9.3% to $33m, and specialist revenue rose 1.9% to $74m.

Mumbrella linked the agency decline to two large losses. VML Australia lost the Department of Defence creative account, worth about $18.8m a year, to TBWA, and Ogilvy lost Suncorp to Publicis' Leo Australia in November 2024.

Fewer staff, smaller loss

Employee costs fell 8.8% to $368m, and the group ended 2025 with 2,357 staff. The net loss narrowed to $36m from $65.4m, helped by impairment charges halving to $44m.

Rose Herceg took the chief executive title in April 2026, after the accounts' period closed. Her previous title was president.

The tax question

The accounts do not explain why the service fee rose by $23.4m in a year when local revenue fell by $69m, or what the $75.2m pays for. Holding companies typically use these charges to recover central costs such as technology, data platforms and group management.

A fee paid to an overseas parent is generally a deductible cost for the Australian business, so a larger charge lowers the profit on which Australian company tax is calculated. For that reason the Australian Taxation Office requires cross-border dealings between related companies to be priced at arm's length, and says businesses with significant related-party dealings and low tax performance compared with their industry are at the greatest risk of review.

There is no suggestion that WPP has broken any tax rule, and the reported figures do not show how the fee was set or what tax the local business paid. WPP has not publicly explained the increase.

What clients are paying for

For clients, the numbers put a figure on a question procurement teams already ask in pitches: how much of an agency fee pays for the people on the business, and how much leaves the country. WPP's local creative agencies earned $191m in 2025. The parent took $75.2m from the whole group.

James Dore

James Dore is Strategy Director at Bushnote, a leader in SEO and AEO in Australia. He writes on search, AI and the technology decisions shaping government and industry.