The Dynamic State of PR: Trends, Challenges & What's Next

Cision’s release of its Inside PR report for 2026 has exposed many of the current trends, challenges and opportunities the PR industry is facing.  As brands continue to invest more in their storytelling potential, it is important for them to keep in mind the ongoing shifts, challenges and opportunities the PR landscape is facing to better strengthen their communications strategies and gain a stronger control over their narratives.

Exploring New Avenues for Storytelling

The media landscape has been dramatically changing for over a decade. Where newspapers once dominated journalist's publicity goals, new avenues for public exposure and perception have rapidly risen in prominence and reach. Sixty percent of overall survey respondents cited that the changing media landscape through the shift to social media and the blurring of journalists and content creators was one of the top challenges PR teams are facing.

Broken down, this is a challenge that all levels of PR are encountering with 64% of executives and 60% of managers struggling with the changing media landscape. This highlights how the rapid evolution of media channels is forcing organizations to rethink both strategy and day-to-day outreach across the entire PR function.

This shift in how audiences are consuming news and the notable influence of online creators is here to stay. Agencies like Greenough aren’t panicking, though. We are using it as an opportunity to explore new avenues and leverage new ways to reach target audiences by looking at new outlets to conduct outreach to, such as Substacks, podcasts, working with influencers, developing LinkedIn Newsletters for clients to better reach their audiences and more. The PR professionals and brands that lean into these new avenues are the ones that will rise to the top by rethinking old strategies from what stories are told, how and where they’re told, and how they’re pitched.

PR Teams Are Being Asked to Do More with Less

In Cision’s survey, PR professionals across agencies and in-house report leaner resources, putting strain on teams to produce measurable results. 58% of survey respondents cited resource pressures (tighter budgets and leaner teams) as one of the top three challenges their teams are currently facing. This reality is even more revealing when looking at the breakdown of the response by job levels. 67% of managers, compared to 45% of executives, cited resource pressures as a top challenge, highlighting the growing strain on the professionals responsible for executing day-to-day media work and delivering results with fewer resources.

As a result of this strain, PR teams are learning to become craftier with the resources that are available to them. Many agencies are exploring and investing in AI technology to be more efficient and streamline workflows so they can focus on deeper strategizing and more impactful content for their clients.  

It’s important to remember, though, that even though AI can massively benefit agencies and clients, it’s not 100% perfect: hallucinations happen; some models are built with bias and ethical blind spots; net new ideas aren’t possible. Clients need to understand that what makes storytelling authentic are the people behind it, and that true, authentic, successful media strategies can’t be churned out by a machine, no matter how intelligent.

AI Is Becoming a Core PR Tool

The rising prominence of AI in the workplace is an opportunity PR teams and agencies are taking advantage of to be more impactful in their communications and media efforts. Across all job levels and organizational types, there has been an industry-wide commitment to blending creativity with data, and tactical execution with business insight. 48% of all respondents said that AI and automation were one of the greatest opportunities their teams could leverage in their work.  

Taking a closer look at how AI is being used in PR work is also signaling a potential shift in PR’s job function.

As a result, agencies are expected to move even faster and with a deeper understanding of the industries their clients are in and the real-time changes it undergoes. Clients already depend heavily on their PR partners to navigate the media landscape. With AI helping to streamline workflows and brainstorm ideas, the increased productivity and deeper understanding will become a baseline expectation by clients.

While any AI tool can serve as a core-tool for employees across industries, the real benefits come from an agency understanding the roles and responsibilities AI can ethically take on to support the most impactful and efficient work. At Greenough, we recognize and value the different ways our clients want to tell their stories, which is why we leverage AI tools that respect the intellectual property and brand guidelines across clients when helping us work.  

PR Is Increasingly Tied to Business Outcomes

While brand awareness has always been PR’s north star, there has been a rising push for measurable impacts and outcomes. When questioned, the top 3 priorities for PR teams for 2026 broke down as 73% for brand awareness, 55% responded to help drive sales and revenue, and 50% said PR measurement and ROI. AI’s rising presence in PR workflows has the potential to make these goals more quantifiable for teams as it’s being used across functions and levels. Agencies can begin to not only increase their productivity using AI but could even begin to quantify functions such as creative brainstorming by comparing the rate of new media angles and ideas being developed before AI usage and after.  

At Greenough, we're leveraging AI visibility tools to bring greater precision and accountability to our PR goal-setting. Clients have benefited from this approach, with AI-driven insights revealing the specific channels and platforms that are regularly cited in LLM responses, helping us to create targeted campaigns and demonstrate clear, data-backed results that align directly with their communications goals and meet audiences exactly where they are. This helps us quantify success in a more meaningful way, ranking how performance in those high-concentration channels translates to measurable business outcomes.

Conclusion

The PR industry is rapidly shifting due to the everchanging media landscape, ongoing resource challenges, the introduction of AI and automation into workflows and more. These challenges and trends point to the need for measurable outcomes to determine what successful PR looks like for brands. While it may seem like the PR industry is shifting from valuing audience perception to a numbers game of quantifiable results, non-quantifiable skills such as storytelling, content creation and media relations still top the list of most valuable PR skills.

The recent integration of AI is undoubtedly one of the biggest game changers PR professionals are facing, but the ones who are quick to adopt the technology intentionally are the ones who will see success in accurately and effectively telling and sharing their brands’ stories. Human-led, AI-supported PR is the future of the industry, and those savvy enough to keep up are the ones that will define and push the boundaries of what good PR can actually look like.

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