The Agency Pulse
When a quarter feels hard, the question that actually matters is whether it is you or everyone. You can see your own pipeline and your own bank balance. You cannot see anybody else’s, so a market-wide dip reads as a personal failure, and a problem of your own making hides behind the assumption that everyone must be having the same trouble. This page is the other half of that picture.
Every quarter, agency leaders on the Agency Loop panel answer the same three questions about cashflow, new business and workload. The answers are anonymous, the panel is made up of people running agencies rather than selling to them, and the results are free to read and free to quote.
This page is updated in place each quarter, so the link you save today will still hold the current numbers next year.
How it has moved
One number per quarter, built from all three questions below. Above 50 means agency leaders are answering positively more often than negatively. Below 50 means the opposite. It sat above the line every quarter until Q2 2026.
What sits behind it
Each line is a net balance: the share of agencies answering positively, minus the share answering negatively. Zero means the panel is evenly split. Plus 20 means twenty percentage points more positive than negative. Workload enters as a demand signal, so a fall means more agencies sitting idle than stretched.
Where the workload sits
The share of agencies reporting each state. Optimised is the one to watch, because it is what everyone is aiming at. The other two lines are the two ways of missing it, and they usually run in opposite directions.
All the numbers
| Quarter | Pulse | Cashflow | New business | Demand | Under-utilised | Optimised | Overextended |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q3 2024 | 51.6 | +25.8 | -22.6 | +6.5 | 35% | 23% | 42% |
| Q4 2024 | 54.1 | +17.4 | -3.1 | +10.2 | 42% | 6% | 52% |
| Q1 2025 | 57.6 | +18.7 | +5.3 | +21.3 | 28% | 23% | 49% |
| Q2 2025 | 55.8 | +30.4 | -4.3 | +8.7 | 37% | 17% | 46% |
| Q3 2025 | 51.6 | +19.4 | 0 | -9.7 | 45% | 19% | 35% |
| Q4 2025 | 54.9 | +23.5 | -8.8 | +14.7 | 32% | 21% | 47% |
| Q1 2026 | 53.2 | +5.7 | +2.9 | +10.8 | 32% | 24% | 43% |
| Q2 2026 | 47.7 | +17.5 | -3.5 | -28.1 | 49% | 30% | 21% |
What the latest quarter says
The drop is not about money. Cashflow sentiment came in at +17.5 points, comfortably positive and close to where it has sat for two years. New business landed at -3.5, which is also about normal for this panel. Neither question moved much.
Workload did. 49% of agencies reported being under-utilised, the highest in the series, whilst 21% reported being overextended, the lowest. That is the widest gap between idle capacity and overload the survey has recorded, and it is what pulled the Pulse below 50.
The counter-reading is worth holding onto. 30% reported an optimised workload, which is the best figure recorded, and only 9% were significantly out at either extreme. Fewer agencies are being run into the ground. Whether that reads as balance or as slack depends on what happens to the pipeline over the next two quarters.
How to read it, and how to quote it
The three questions are asked in the same words every quarter:
- How would you rate your business cash flow situation TODAY?
- How would you describe your current new business pipeline?
- How would you describe the agency workload balance over the last month?
Each is answered on a five point scale. Cashflow and new business run from bad to good, so they are reported as a net balance: the share answering in the top two boxes minus the share answering in the bottom two. Workload runs from under-utilised to overextended, with the healthy answer in the middle, so it is never reported as an average. A panel split evenly between idle and overloaded would average out to a picture of perfect balance, which would be nonsense.
The Pulse itself is the mean of the three net balances, halved and centred on 50. Workload enters it as a demand signal, where more agencies idle than stretched pulls the number down. How comfortable those agencies are is reported separately, in the third chart, because sustained overwork should never read as strength.
The panel is made up of UK agency leaders who have opted in to take part. It now runs to over 200 agencies across disciplines, and the number answering varies from quarter to quarter. Quote any figure on this page with a link back to it. If you want a cut of the data that is not shown here, ask.
Take part in the next one
The panel is what makes this worth reading. Answering takes a couple of minutes, your answers stay anonymous, and everyone who takes part gets the full report, including the deeper focus topic that changes each quarter. More on that on the Agency Loop page.