• The global PR business grew by close to 6% in constant currency terms last year (less than 1% in US dollar terms).
• 170 of the top 250 firms grew in 2024, while 58 saw revenue decline, reflecting a tumultuous year.
• The global PR agency business is worth a little lss than $48 billion according to our conservative estimate, using new data to extrapolate from our survey.
• The large publicly-traded agencies did not underperform the market in 2024-for the first time in at least a decade.
• Growth was lowest for firms headquartered in the US (3.5%) and highest for firms based in continental Europe (better than 10%).
• Revenue per head increased from $186,000 to around $196,000.

The global public relations business grew by less than one percentage point in US dollar terms in 2024, although in local currency terns, growth was close to 6%, with 170 of the top 250 firms reporting positive fee income growth and 58 firms reporting a decline in fees, reflecting a tumultuous year for the global business.

More than 350 firms submitted information to PRovoke Media this year, while we estimated fee income-drawing on publicly available information and our own industry expertise-for more than 40 additional firms which elected not to provide information.

As always, those not providing data include many of the world's largest public relations firms-including six of the top 12 on our ranking-many of them owned by publicly-traded companies that refuse to allow individual brands or operating companies to share revenue information.

The firms on our 2025 PRovoke Media 250 list had combined fee income of $17.4 billion, compared with $17.3 billion last yea . The other firms submitting fee income numbers to this year's ranking had an additional $300 million in fee income, taking the total for the approximately 400 firms included in our total to around $17.7 billion.

“Industry growth in 2024 was clearly impacted by changes in the exchange rate,” says PRovoke Media founder Paul Holmes, who has been studying the industry for more than 40 years.“So growth looks better in constant currency terms than it does based on the US dollar standard we use for comparison purposes.

“Having said that, it's clear that there were significant economic headwinds in 2024, so that almost a quarter of the firms on our survey reported a decline in fee income, and anecdotal evidence suggests that firms around the world are being asked to do more for less.”

A $48 Billion Business

In recent years PRovoke Media has calculated the overall size of the public relations agency business using an extremely conservative methodology, so that last year our estimate of the industry's size was about $20 billion.

This estimate suggests that the 400 or so firms included in our ranking process account for something like 87% of global public relations revenues-an assumption that seems dubious at best, especially given the“long tail” nature of a business like PR, with tens of thousands of smaller firms.

Other estimates have put the overall size of the PR agency business at around $68.7 billion (IBISWorld ). And the same research suggests that more than 370,000 people work in public relations agencies around the world.

Based on the revenue per head of the firms in our survey, that would suggest a public relations agency business worth around $72 billion-although as we have noted, there are significant regional differences in revenue per head and it is perhaps reasonable to assume that the larger, and most well-known firms appearing on this list have a higher revenue per head than the industry average.

But if we assume that revenue per head for firms outside of the survey is approximately half that of those included, then the size of the global public relations agency business would be around $48.5 billion.

“The overall size of the public relations agency business is difficult to calculate, given the rather loose definition of what public relations is and the vast number of smaller firms in far-flung markets,” says Holmes.“Under the circumstances, we are comfortable with our estimate of a business that is worth almost $50 billion.”

Holding Companies Hold Their Own

For the first time in at least a decade, the large publicly-traded holding companies did not significantly underperform independent and midsize firms.

While there were mid-single digit declines at Edelman and Burson, the world's two largest PR agencies, with Edelman dipping back below the $1 billion fee income level it reached in 2022, seven of the other eight firms in our top 10 grew, and the top 10 as a whole were up by about 2%.

And while independent firms such as Real Chemistry and FGS Global-both of which reportrd double-digit growth-clearly boosted that number, the publicly-traded holding companies reported revenue gains in line with the industry as a whole.

Omnicom, parent of FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, Porter Novelli and more, reported PR revenue up by 3.7% in 2024; Weber Shandwick and Golin parent Interpublic does not break out PR specifically (it's part of a group that includes event management firms also) but is believed to have grown in the low single digits; only WPP, which sold its FGS holding to KKR in the middle of the year, saw PR revenues decline.

“It's too early to say that the big holding companies are turning things around,” said Holmes.“The evidence of the past decade continues to suggest that these agencies are at a significant competitive disadvantage compared to independent and midsize firms. But it is clear that 2024 was a better year for more of them, in comparative terms.”

Tough Times in the US

Because so many of the larger firms on the list-and particularly the larger firms-are global (or at least international) in nature, it can be difficult to be definitive about regional differences in performance.

In the past, we have reported on differences based on reporting currency, but a growing number of European firms, and a majority of Asia-Pacific firms, report their numbers in US dollar terms, which makes this problematic. So this year we focused on where individual agencies are based as a rough proxy for regional performance.

We found significant differences, with firms headquartered in continental Europe reporting the strongest growth, a little over 10% in constant currency terms. Firms based in the Asia-Pacific region reported growth of 7% and firms based in the UK reported growth of a little over 6%. It was firms based in the US (117 firms representing a little more than 50% of the global revenue total) that trailed, with growth of around 3.5%.

“It seems clear that firms headquartered in the US struggled in 2024, compared to those in Europe and Asia,” said Holmes.“The data don't tell us why, obviously, but one inference is that the political turmoil, the elections of November 2024, and the backlash against ESG and DEI-more pronounced in the US than in the rest of the world-contributed to the comparatively slow growth.”

Revenue per Head Increases

Drawing on data from firm for which we were able to estimate both fee income and staffing levels, we are able to draw some conclusions about trends in revenue per head.

Excluding many of the largest publicly traded firms in this year's global rankings, there are slightly more than 55,000 employees across 234 firms, a slight decrease over the number of employees across 240 firms we reported on last year.

The revenue per head was $196,000 last year, up from $186,500 in the previous year-although with very significant regional differences.

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