Every month we re-pull the Companies House register for every UK marketing company incorporated since January 2025, and check what moved. This month: formations are steady, one cohort's death rate leapt by twelve points, and the leap turned out to be a filing batch rather than a collapse. Here is the number, and the caveat that comes with it.
UK marketing companies incorporated since January 2025
Companies House register, analysed by Mode, 3 August 2026formations in July 2026, the latest complete month
Companies House register, analysed by Mode, 3 August 2026formation rate in 2026 so far against the 2025 monthly average
Companies House register, analysed by Mode, 3 August 2026of the January 2025 cohort now dissolved, at nineteen months
Companies House register, analysed by Mode, 3 August 2026of those 630 dissolutions were recorded in July 2026 alone
Companies House register, analysed by Mode, 3 August 2026confirmed generative-engine-optimisation companies on the register
Companies House register, analysed by Mode, 3 August 2026The register now holds 30,659 UK marketing companies incorporated since 1 January 2025, across the four marketing SIC codes we track. July 2026, the most recent complete month, added 1,633.
The rate is close to flat. Across 2025 the register averaged 1,636 new marketing companies a month. Across January to July 2026 it has averaged 1,571, about 4% lower. Month to month the range is wide, from 1,294 in February to 1,752 in January, so a single slow month means very little. What the run of twenty months does say is that nothing has scared people off starting a marketing company: not the rate falls, not the in-housing, not AI. Supply is not the problem in this market.
When we measured the January 2025 cohort last month, 27.1% of it had dissolved within eighteen months. This month the same cohort reads 38.9% dissolved, 630 of 1,621 companies, at nineteen months. That is a twelve-point move in three weeks, and a twelve-point move in three weeks is the kind of number that should make you suspicious before it makes you excited.
So we checked when the dissolutions were actually recorded, rather than just counting them. Through 2026 that cohort had been losing roughly thirty companies a month. Then 373 of the 630 dissolutions landed in July 2026 alone. Businesses do not fail in a single synchronised week. Registrars strike them off in batches, and this is the compulsory strike-off wave arriving for companies that stopped filing roughly a year earlier.
So the 38.9% is true, those companies really are gone, but it is a backlog being cleared, not a July collapse. The failures happened quietly over the preceding year and were recorded at once. The same thing is already starting on the next cohort: the February 2025 group sits at 18.3% dissolved at eighteen months, and 67 of its cessations were recorded in the first three days of August.
The practical lesson, for anyone reading register data including us: comparing two cohorts on a single date tells you as much about where each one sits in the strike-off cycle as it does about how they are trading. We publish the batch alongside the percentage so the figure can be argued with.
The IPA Bellwether report for Q2 2026, published 16 July 2026, found UK marketing budgets revised up again: 23.8% of respondents increased spend against 16.9% who cut, a net balance of +6.9%, just below Q1's +7.3%, with 59.4% holding flat. Events led the categories at +11.0% and video advertising posted its strongest quarter in seven. The report forecasts UK adspend growth of 2.1% in 2026, rising to 2.3% in 2027.
Publicis Groupe reported first-half 2026 results the same day: organic growth of 4.7% for the half and 4.8% in Q2, net revenue of €7,229 million, an operating margin of 17.5%, and raised full-year guidance of +4.5% to +5% (Publicis Groupe H1 2026 results, 16 July 2026). In the same release it said it has equipped 110,000 employees with AI tools and is targeting a 25% reduction in certain manual tasks, which is the clearest statement yet from a major group that the efficiency is meant to come out of the labour line.
WPP reports its interim results on 6 August 2026, three days after this pulse. Its own pre-close guidance was for like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs to decline in the mid to high single digits in the first half, with an improving second half (WPP 2026 interim pre-close aide memoire). We will read the actual figures into next month's pulse rather than pre-judge them here. On the evidence so far the pattern from last year holds: the groups selling platforms and data are growing, and the groups selling time are not.
We track one deliberately narrow signal each month: how many new UK marketing companies are named for generative engine optimisation, the work of being found and cited by AI assistants. Nineteen months into the data the answer is still zero confirmed. Our name filter returned two matches this month, and both fell over on inspection: one is a personal surname, the other reads as a geographic advertising name. Neither is a GEO business, so neither counts.
One February 2026 incorporation does carry the vocabulary, trading under a name that combines “geo” and “cite”. We checked its directors against the UK GEO agency using a near-identical trading name and they are different people, so we are recording it as an unverified candidate rather than a first. For contrast, 376 of the 30,659 companies have “AI” in the name, up from 364 last month, which is still only 1.2% of the population.
Above the register the category is clearly forming: the UK now has enough AI-visibility agencies to support ranked “best GEO agency” listicles, and Adobe's roughly $1.9 billion agreement to acquire Semrush, announced 19 November 2025, was framed explicitly around brand visibility in the agentic AI era. The discipline is real and being sold. It just has not yet reached the point where founders name a company after it.
Register figures are our own analysis, pulled 3 August 2026 from the Companies House Advanced Search API across four marketing SIC codes (73110 advertising agencies, 70210 public relations, 73120 media representation, 73200 market research), deduplicated across codes, covering incorporations from 1 January 2025. Cohort mortality counts any company whose status is not active. August 2026 is excluded from monthly formation figures because the month is incomplete. Dissolution timing is measured from each company's recorded cessation date.
Other sources: IPA Bellwether Report Q2 2026 (published 16 July 2026) · Publicis Groupe First Half 2026 Results (16 July 2026) · WPP 2026 Interim Pre-Close Aide Memoire and notification of interim results on 6 August 2026 · The Wow Company BenchPress 2026 · Adobe and Semrush acquisition announcement, 19 November 2025. Figures are reported as published by each source, and where sources conflict we use the more conservative number. Errors ours, corrections welcome at hello@modemarketing.ai.
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