The Honomichl 50 Rankings are out as of late last week.

AMA members can read the full report here.

GreenBook has some good topline coverage here.

Key points:

1. 2009 US revenue for the top 50 fell 3.5%, with Harris Interactive dropping 24% and Gfk (-11.7%), Synovate (-12.4%) and Ipsos (-7.3%) all struggling through this recession. The larger firms had problems, but from what I hear this recession drove many of the smaller firms to the brink. A CASRO survey of smaller firms (avg. of $5 million in reveue) found that their revenue was down 8.5%.

2. But, the outliers are interesting. Nielsen and Arbitron came in with growth of 3% and 4% respectively. Their consumers could not and did not substitute down. Westat, headquartered not too far from my offices in Washington, DC, did very well. Their work is largely for federal agencies and this has made them relatively recession-proof thus far. Public Opinion Strategies, a great company and a former employer, was down 57% from 2008, but that is ONLY because they are a political polling firm and there were no federal elections in 2009. That they made the list at all for 2009 is extremely impressive and suggests that they are finding ways to stabilize their heavily cyclical business.

3. But, the BIG outlier, the one that leaps off the page, is Communispace. The 800 pound MROC gorilla (245 employees) found 18% growth in 2009, in a downturn. This is prime evidence to me that the newer, non-traditional research methods are where the growth will be. Communispace is an almost perfect test case of this since they are solely focused on MROCs. In essence, they are a “tracking stock” for MROCs.

4. Globalization. The Honomichl report lists the percentage of each company’s business that is ex-US. Aside from government contracting it appears that one can’t get big unless one gets global.

5. New Entrants. StrategyOne, my employer, made the list for the first time.