The U.S. PR industry grew by just 4.8%, according to a survey released on July 26 by Gould+Partners. The results of this survey were not consistent with the results of the annual Best Practices Benchmarking report released in June, showing that Operating Profit increased from 15.2% to 18.0%.
Based on stats from 237 North American PR agencies, most categories of firms had less growth than the prior year. The $10 Mill to $25 Mill group had the highest growth rate of 6.5%. The firms in excess of $25 Mill were flat, at 1% growth, consistent with what has been disclosed by the holding companies.
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.
Growth for each of the ten regions in 2017 was not consistent with prior years. The leading growth region was Northern CA at 10.0%, DC was next at 9.2%, Southeast & Southwest both were at 8.3%, Northeast , Midwest and Canada were at 2.0%, Northwest was 1.2%. NY Metro and Southern CA were flat with just 0.2% growth.
Rick Gould, Managing Partner and originator of the survey, said “One surprising finding in our analysis was that the top 15 holding company owned firms only included five firms that had net revenue growth, and those firms only had slight growth, whereas the top 15 independent firms included only two that had a very slight decrease in net revenues. The other thirteen of the top fifteen all had net revenue growth.”
The survey is our sixth annual poll focused on Net Revenue Growth. It is a barometer to give us insight if the PR industry is growing at the U.S. pace and against other industries.
Click on the link to view the full report: Gould+Partners 2018 Net Revenue Growth Report