# How big is an agency really?

**Short answer.** Count full-time equivalents from the social balance sheet, not the faces on the team page. That gap is systematically large at agencies, because freelancers and interns appear on the site but not in the filing.

Count full-time equivalents, not the faces on the team page. That gap is systematically large at agencies, and it is almost never bad faith: freelancers, interns, part-timers and people who left last year appear on a website but not in a social balance sheet.

## Where the real figure sits

In the social balance sheet of the filed annual accounts, free at the National Bank. It shows the average number of full-time equivalents over the financial year, plus arrivals and departures. IKAg's factsheets carry that figure per agency, with the financial year attached.

Note: those figures are older than the website. Accounts for 2024 are filed during 2025, so you are always reading a photograph from a year earlier.

## Why the figure alone is not enough

An agency of thirty can have twenty-five people on one large client. What you want to know is not how big the agency is, but how much of it is available to you.

So ask three things:

1. How many people work on the largest client?
2. How many people would be on my account, and how many other clients do they carry?
3. How much of the work is outsourced, and to whom?

That third answer often explains the gap between the team page and the balance sheet, and it is not a problem as long as you know who touches your work.

## One pitfall with larger names

Some agencies consist of several companies. If you look at only one company number, you read a fraction of the whole. IKAg's factsheets roll those companies up into one agency and only add up full-time equivalents. Revenue and gross margin are deliberately **not** added: companies within one group invoice each other, and then the sum is not a sum.

See also: [how big the average agency is](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/hoe-groot-is-een-gemiddeld-bureau) and [who works at an agency](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/wie-werkt-er-bij-een-bureau).

## Related questions

- [Who works at an agency?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/wie-werkt-er-bij-een-bureau): The question that matters is not who works there but who will be on your account, and whether that person was in the pitch room. Ask for names, not job titles, and put them in writing at the start.
- [How big is the average agency?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/hoe-groot-is-een-gemiddeld-bureau): Smaller than you think: the median growing agency in the Belgian market had 7.1 full-time equivalents and the median shrinking one 7.8. The agencies you know are the exception, not the average.
- [Should I pick a big agency or a small one?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/groot-of-klein-bureau): Size does not predict quality: the rank correlation between headcount and growth is 0.003. What it does predict is whether you will work with the people you met in the pitch.

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IKAg is the business consultant for marketing and agencies in Belgium and the Netherlands. Market figures come from the Agency Barometer, calculated on the annual accounts agencies filed with the National Bank themselves. Figures on pitches and satisfaction come from IKAg-guided processes, and are always presented as such.

- All questions: https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq
- Last updated: 2026-08-19