Cision's Inside PR 2026: What PR Teams Need to Prioritize Next
Cision's new report, Inside PR 2026: Trends, Challenges, and What's Next, captures a profession under pressure and in motion. Surveying nearly 600 PR pros across the U.S. and UK, it shows a field holding tight to creativity and storytelling while being pressed to move faster, adopt AI with intent, and prove impact in hard numbers.
The takeaway is simple: brand building still matters, but leaders expect measurable business outcomes. Agility is the missing link.
Pressure is up. Agility is lagging.
Sixty percent of teams say the shifting media environment is their top challenge. Another 58 percent cite resource pressure. Agency teams feel this most, with 71 percent calling media fragmentation a major hurdle as journalist behavior and formats change.
There's also a clear perception gap. One in three executives calls their organization "extremely agile," but only 14 percent of employees agree. The biggest blockers: team size and org design (63 percent) and slow approvals (53 percent). Ambition isn't the problem-systems are.
Priorities are splitting: awareness vs. revenue
Brand awareness remains PR's north star for many (36 percent). But senior leaders and agencies are shifting focus. Executives (32 percent) and agencies (33 percent) prioritize revenue and ROI more than in-house teams and non-executives, roughly 40 percent of whom still put awareness first.
This creates an alignment gap. Leaders are asking for clearer commercial value, while frontline teams are still measured on reach and reputation. That tension will define 2026 planning.
AI is mainstream-human craft still wins
AI is now part of daily PR workflows. Ninety-one percent use generative AI; 73 percent for idea generation, 68 percent for writing and refinement. Forty percent use AI-driven media monitoring, and nearly a third rely on AI for reporting.
Even with that adoption, the core skill of the job remains human: storytelling is the most in-demand skill for 2026 (59 percent). Media relations, strategic planning, and data interpretation follow closely-skills that require judgment, taste, and context.
The new PR playbook
PR is moving toward a blend of craft and intelligence. Media monitoring is the most relied-on tool, supporting more analytical narrative management. Teams are valuing multidisciplinary skills: creative development, data literacy, smart experimentation, and cross-functional coordination.
As Guy Abramo, CEO of Cision, puts it: "PR teams are being challenged to move faster, prove impact, and integrate AI responsibly-while continuing to deliver the creativity and narrative craftsmanship that make communications meaningful. The teams that can blend human insight with intelligent automation will be the ones who define the next era of PR."
What to do now: a 6-point action plan
- Close the agility gap: Map your approval chain and remove steps. Set SLAs for sign-off. Create "fast lanes" for low-risk content.
- Resource for speed: Build a small, cross-functional pod for rapid response and testing. Protect creative cycles with clear prioritization.
- Set tiered metrics: Track awareness and sentiment, but tie them to pipeline, influenced revenue, and cost to acquire attention. Report both.
- Operationalize AI: Define use cases (ideation, briefs, outlines, repurposing, summaries, first-draft reporting). Set quality, privacy, and disclosure rules.
- Upgrade your data loop: Invest in real-time monitoring and dashboards that surface trend shifts and message pull-through. Review weekly.
- Upskill the team: Level up storytelling, media strategy, and data interpretation alongside AI fluency. Consider role-based learning paths via Complete AI Training.
Metrics that matter in 2026
- Awareness and credibility: share of voice, sentiment, leadership mentions, message integrity.
- Engagement quality: time on page, referral sources, journalist replies, event conversions.
- Business impact: sourced and influenced pipeline, win-rate lift, customer expansion mentions, cost per mention.
- Team efficiency: cycle time from brief to publish, approval latency, reuse rate of content, AI-assisted time saved (with quality checks).
Final word
The report makes it clear: the advantage goes to teams that pair sharp storytelling with data clarity and faster operations. AI helps, but it's the system around it-process, priorities, and skills-that turns tools into outcomes.
Read the full study here: Download Inside PR 2026. For added context on media fragmentation, see the Reuters Institute Digital News Report.
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