2015 PR Industry Growth 6.6%, Down From 7.8% in 2014

The nation’s PR agency field grew by 6.6% according to a survey released today by Gould+Partners, the merger and management consulting firm specializing in the PR field. The results of this survey were consistent with the results of the annual Best Practices Benchmarking report released in June, showing that Operating Profit decreased from 16.2% to 15.3% and the Billing/Utilization report issued in July which showed that billing rates did not increase during 2015 at the same pace as salaries and costs.

Based on stats from 215 PR agencies coast to coast and in Canada all categories of firms had less growth than prior year. The $3 Mill to $10 Mill group had a growth rate of 10.4%.  Another interesting stat was the average annual net revenues for each net revenue class. Firms under $3 Mill averaged $1.7 Mill in Net Revenues. Firms from $3 Mill – $10 Mill averaged $5.8 Mill. Firms over $10 Mill- $25 Mill averaged just under $16 Mill and firms in excess of $25 Mill averaged just over $117 Mill, said Rick Gould, managing partner and director of the survey.

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The second part of the study focused on industry growth in the 10 regions of our focus and average net revenues for each of the regions.

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The survey is the fourth annual poll focused on Net Revenue Growth by Gould+Partners, which has been conducting other industry wide surveys for 20 years including the recently released Best Practices Benchmarking Report and the Billing/Utilization Report.

 

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