16+ Best Performance Marketing Agencies in 2023 and How to Choose One [Updated Worldwide Review]

Outgrown your digital marketing agency?

In the world of digital marketing, performance agencies are the ones doing the most to bring in tangible ROI for their clients.

The hard part is finding the right fit for your business. Which is why review lists like these are so helpful.

We’ve done the legwork for you and compiled a diverse list of talented, experienced, and respected performance marketing agencies from established and emerging markets.

Take a look at our list of top performance marketing agencies in America, Europe, Australia, South Africa and Russia.

But first, let us define what performance marketing is:

What is Performance Marketing?

The following video by PerformInsidercom explains this term and the difference between affiliate marketing and performance marketing:

While this video talks about performance-based agreement, please keep in mind that many performance agencies ALSO ask for a monthly retainer.

This retainer is calculated, in many cases, as a percentage of the monthly advertising budget.

Performance Marketing – Main Channels

Performance marketing agencies utilize a range of channels in order to maximize their marketing efforts. These include:

• Display Advertising– through displaying rich media formats such as images, audios, videos, texts and banner ads on frequently visited sites.
• Native Advertising– blending your advertisement into its surroundings, by mimicking the design, content and writing style of a particular web page e.g. Buzzfeed.
• Search Engine Marketing– including ads on search engine pages when certain key words are entered e.g. Google, Bing and Firefox.
• Social Media Marketing– introducing ads on various social media platforms to increase visibility and traffic, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Affiliate Marketing– where a partner markets a product or service to increase sales, traffic and leads for an agreed upon target and compensation.
• Amazon Advertising– digital advertisements of a business’s products and services who wish to increase brand awareness, generate sales and improve loyalty etc.

Performance Marketing Agencies in North America

Gen3 Marketing

Gen3 Marketing is a global leader in performance marketing, with global reach and over two decades of award-winning experience.

It is a full-service agency that specializes in affiliate marketing, PPC, and SEO, offering a full suite of services for each, from customized strategies to ongoing management and optimization.

As the largest affiliate agency and core of the Gen3 Group of agencies, Gen3 Marketing offers benefits that only come with an agency of that size.

Access to a wealth of data and insights that smaller competitors can’t match, combined with the expertise and experience of their award-winning teams, gives Gen3 Marketing a unique advantage.

Gen3’s vast network of valuable publisher relationships across every vertical and platform is another unique advantage. No matter what you need, they have an established, high-quality relationship for you.

That said, Gen3 develops custom strategies for every client, taking a collaborative approach and developing a personal relationship with every client.

They will get to know your business and understand your unique goals to create a bespoke strategy that drives incremental revenue, growth, and tangible results to achieve your goals.

Gen3 is a 15+-time Agency of the Year winner, and in 2022 it was awarded Agency of the Year twice by both Rakuten Marketing and CJ Affiliate.

DMi Partners

DMi Partners brings decades of knowledge and insight to every business problem it is tasked with solving. They know each challenge requires its own approach, a unique strategy, and a little bit of risk-taking. And they’re up for every challenge. 

Since 2003, DMi Partners has committed itself to drive growth for its clients from its headquarters in Philadelphia. As a full-service digital marketing agency, DMi is a leader in managing cost-effective, award-winning campaigns that deliver results.

Perform[cb] Agency

Perform[cb] Agency stand out for its customizable and scalable solutions for performance and affiliate marketing. They also offer a diverse range of services, including mobile app marketing and distribution, making them a truly full-service performance marketing agency.

Perform[cb] Agency works with clients of all sizes and at all stages of the business journey, from small start-ups to household-name enterprises. They’re award-winning agency, and were shortlisted for “Best Performance Marketing Agency” by the International Performance Marketing Awards.

They focus on client relationships, strategic growth, and unique, innovative solutions that are designed to meet individual client needs and maximize growth and ROI for every client.

Performics

Performics is the performance marketing arm of Publicis Media and part of a collection of agencies under the Publicis Groupe network. Founded in the late 90s, they are true pioneers in performance marketing with their background in SEO and SEM.

The agency offers clients the added benefit of its large network of creative and media resources, as well as their deep partnerships with search engines and social media networks.

The Goodway Group

The Goodway Group has a long history of transforming its business to suit the changing media and marketing landscape – starting in 1919 with the founding of a printing business. The company transformed from a direct marketing company to a leading digital media agency with specialist media services, including a proprietary performance-driven digital advertising platform.

iProspect

iProspect is one of the biggest and most well-known performance marketing and advertising agencies in the world and is part of the Dentsu Aegis Network. The agency boasts a worldwide network of specialists, partners, and platforms with a core strength in performance marketing and local market expertise.

Hughes Media

Hughes Media is one of the leading marketing agencies in Atlanta with a focus on long-term relationships. According to their website, the average client on their books has been with them for 8 years. The multi-award-winning agency has a wide range of services ranging from content production to performance marketing.

Performance Marketing Agencies in Europe

Ad Agents

Ad Agents is a performance marketing company within the Ad Pepper Media Group – a holding company with customers in over 50 countries. The company focuses on scalable performance marketing with a proprietary platform called iLead – a platform that enables brands to quickly adapt and activate campaigns in multiple markets.

Kwanko

Kwanko is a leading marketing and advertising agency with a specialization in cross-device performance marketing. They have just launched the Kwanko Platform: a unified platform that offers a complete suite of tools to create, manage, track, and scale campaigns.

Antevenio

Antevenio is a pioneering performance marketing agency with over 20 years of experience in the digital marketing industry. The agency has an experienced team of certified specialists with established relationships within a variety of industries in Europe and America. The company’s focus areas are performance, branding, and loyalty.

Fun fact: Antevenio was the first Spanish advertising company in history to successfully IPO on the Alternext Paris Market.

Quisma

Quisma is a performance marketing agency that specializes in the German market. The agency is part of Group M: the world’s largest advertising media company. Quisma clients have the added advantage of being able to tap into the vast WPP network of agencies, platforms, and specialists.

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Performance Marketing Agencies in Russia

ADLABS

ADLABS Advertising Agency, a division of Add Labs, is one of the leading performance agencies in Russia, offering a wide range of internet marketing services for over 10 years. They are also well known for running their advertising campaigns through their very own automated advertising management systems.

E-Promo

E-Promo is a very popular performance marketing agency in Russia, well-equipped to develop and customize a sound mix of advertising channels and tools for a wide range of companies. They also perform marketing work as a subcontractor for other marketing agencies, such as iProspect.

Performance Marketing Agencies in Australia

Metrixa

Metrixa is a data-driven marketing agency with a goal to drive efficiency and streamline digital marketing operations for its clients. The agency specializes in the Asia Pacific market, with offices in both Australia and Singapore.

Bonus: Metrixa offers a free Adwords Audit!

Contevo

Contevo is a conversion-focused digital marketing agency and one of the most experienced in Australia. The agency offers a full-service suite of services from SEO and PPC to social media and eCommerce.

Performance Marketing Agencies in South Africa

Algorithm

Algorithm is a leading performance marketing and data specialist agency along with its sister agency Quant. The agency specializes in SEO, SEM and Conversion Rate Optimization. Their approach is to “be brilliant at a few things rather than average at them all.”

Rogerwilco

Rogerwilco is an established full-service digital marketing agency that holds over 30 awards for performance marketing. They are “led by strategy, fueled by creativity and driven by results”. For clients looking for a technical advantage, the agency is a listed partner with Google, Drupal, and IBM, which speaks to their core web development offering.

Digital Optimization

Digital Optimization is an agency driven by technology and “obsessed with performance”. The agency is listed as premium partner of Google and Facebook and is a Facebook Ambassador Agency for South Africa.

How to Choose Your Performance Marketing Agency

When assessing potential performance marketing agencies for your business, one might get a bit dazzled by their client portfolios, awards, or beautiful websites. However, it is important to take the following criteria into consideration when appointing your new agency, and don’t forget to ask those tough questions.

Service and Support

1. Multi-channel offerings: does the agency offer media opportunities across a variety of channels and platforms? Or will you be stuck with a one-trick pony?
2. Strategy and experience: do they offer solid strategic advice as part of their core service, or do they simply activate what your in-house marketing team briefs them on?
3. Core team: is the core team made up of ipeertopeermarketing.co/digital-marketing-expertsndividuals with enough expertise and seniority to lead your account, and will you have access to their senior leadership?
4. Support team: is the agency support team (client service, account managers, project managers) big enough to give you high quality, hands-on support?
5. Staff turnover: it is important to discuss staff turnover in both core and support teams; you don’t want to be changing strategists and account managers every few months.

Track record

1. Compatibility: have they worked with a company like yours before? It’s important to discuss this with your potential agency to find out if they understand your industry well enough.
2. Client testimonials: ask for latest client testimonials. It would help to request references or testimonials from clients in a similar industry to yours.
3. Results-based case studies: request case studies that show real ROI – don’t be afraid to ask for the numbers!

Added Value

1. Certifications and Accreditation: in some cases, experience matters more than certifications. However, having Google, Facebook, and other partner certifications might unlock other premium platform opportunities
2. Other digital services: does the agency have other departments that you could tap into such as graphic design, web development, video production?
3. A great network: is the agency connected to other media partners and networks that could be beneficial to you?

Remember, it all depends on what your business needs are. Whether it’s straight up SEO or part of large integrated campaign that requires content and design, there’s an agency for you on this list.

Branding Agency VS Performance Agency

A branding agency and a performance agency may appear similar, but they are in fact, very different. A branding agency solely concentrates on developing the identity of an organization or business through a range of marketing services.

These include creating a unique identity and logo, conducting market research and customer surveys to understand the target market, and then segmenting and profiling the target market. A performance agency rather focuses on helping a brand reach a broader audience.

These audiences are reached through a wide range of marketing channels (as listed above). Other services include search engine advertising, copywriting, conversion rate optimization, paid social media ads, and landing page creation, amongst many more.

Digital Agency VS Performance Agency

Digital agencies and performance agencies differ largely in the variety of marketing services they offer, while they also have a level of overlap.

Performance agencies specialize in optimizing a brand’s reach through all the marketing channels listed above and focus primarily on marketing performance.

They achieve this by adhering to each company’s unique set of KPIs. Performance agencies often have a very wide marketing reach.

On the other hand, digital agencies tend to offer a much broader range of marketing services that focus on growing and optimizing a company’s digital assets, such as its website, online stores, audio-visual media, logos, etc.

A digital agency can also be seen as a full-service agency, in which case they might offer performance marketing and branding services as an additional service.

These services would also include using performance marketing channels, such as search engine marketing, native advertising and affiliate marketing.

References

What is Performance Marketing?: https://www.upgrow.io/blog/what-is-a-performance-marketing-agency

Best SEO Digital Marketing Agencies: https://www.ventureharbour.com/best-seo-digital-marketing-agencies/

What You Should Know About Performance Marketing: https://thepma.org/our-work/the-performance-marketing-industry/

Top 10 Performance Marketing Agencies: https://www.outbrain.com/blog/top-10-performance-marketing-agencies/