The top PR priorities, challenges and opportunities in 2026 [survey]

Building awareness is the top PR priority, the changing media landscape is the biggest challenge and using AI productively represents the best opportunity

Cision, a public relations (PR) software vendor, polled 561 communications professionals from the U.S. and UK late last year. I’m not a fan of Cision’s software, or their business practices, however, I do think the survey provides a sound look at the challenges and opportunities facing PR in 2026.

This post provides a look at some of the highlights of the survey, along with my perspective of the findings.

1. Top priorities for PR in 2026

PR professionals who took the survey identified their top priorities as follows:

73% said brand awareness;
55% said driving sales/revenue; and
49% said PR Measurement and ROI.

Perspective: These findings jive with another survey I covered recently about B2B events and PR objectives. Indeed, building brand awareness is a natural objective for PR.

While a strong brand can facilitate sales, I’d caution communicators who work in B2B environments away from pinning hopes that PR will drive sales. It’s just not realistic.

Why? First, if it’s media relations, editors and reporters don’t want sales pitches; they want stories. If closing deals is your priority, then the copy you write is going to get salesy too. That’s unlikely to land a placement. If you can’t land placements, then you aren’t building a brand and you’ve got nothing to measure.

Second, I’ve written about a gazillion studies on these pages that show sales in B2B require convincing teams of buyers, not just one person. Here’s a summary of five of them.

That process takes several months, depending on the complexity of the technology and dozens of touches in an omnichannel environment. It’s a team effort and seeking a direct cause-and-effect of any single tactic is fruitless.

These studies mentioned all mirror my own observations over the course of 25 years working in B2B. PR can and should be aligned with sales. Brand awareness brings familiarity, which supports sales outreach and cold calls. Marketing and businesses should make meaningful use of the coverage that PR earns.

Those are important functions, but they are also supportive. Yes, every now and again, a deal closes and a new customer will credit a story – but those are few and far between. You should strive to collect those anecdotes but drop the bravado over driving sales.

Third, the media is highly fractured. Few news organizations today command the same size audience they did when I started out. Those days are gone. It takes a far greater effort to earn media today than it once did and the impact of any given placement isn’t what it once was.

2. The top challenges facing PR in 2026

Respondents to this survey identified the following as the top challenges communications professionals are facing:

60% said the changing media landscape;
58% said resource pressure;
50% said AI and automation;
38% said data-driven strategies;
25% said misinformation and disinformation risks; and
18% said influencer evolution.

Perspective: Many of these challenges are solvable. You can experiment with AI. You can gather data. Developing crisis plans to correct misinformation is just problem-solving. Budget constraints breed creativity. These challenges are never going to be resolved. The path to addressing them is professional development.

With respect to the media landscape, that’s the one factor that’s completely outside of PR’s control. The best way to address it is to create a site, blog, or newsletter that looks, feels and acts like the media. Report on your industry through your own unique lenses.

Some people call this brand journalism, others call it content marketing, I call essential. Running a blog like a site enables you to repurpose earned media, build relationships through content, attract backlinks and most importantly of all, to build a subscribed audience.

One of the biggest challenges in effective media relations is proving to a reporter that a story idea will be of interest to their audience. A subscribed audience is social proof.

There have been countless times in my career where a reporter declined a pitch, and I then turned it into a blog post that got traction – and led to coverage. In a couple of cases, it’s led to coverage in the same publication where the reporter had rejected my pitch.

None of this replaces foundational media relations work – it augments it. Yes, it’s a ton of extra work. It’s one more task on a to-do list that’s already very long, but it’s completely worth it. Content marketing, brand journalism, whatever euphemism you prefer, it makes your PR efforts more efficient and productive.

3. The top opportunities for PR in 2026

Communications professionals who answered this survey identified the following at the top opportunities this year:

48% said AI and automation to drive efficiency and insights;
39% said strengthening journalist and creator relationships;
32% said closer alignment with marketing and business strategy;
31% said data and analytics to demonstrate ROI and strategy;
29% said executive visibility and thought leadership; and
21% said partnering with influencers and advocates (including employees).

Perspective: These are all reasonable opportunities. There’s a lot of hyperbole around AI at the moment, but if we look past that, it is a useful tool in the hands of an experienced PR professional. In my observation, learning how to use AI and incorporating it into your daily work will turn 1 subject matter expert (SME) into 1.25 or 1.5 SMEs. That old notion that you won’t be replaced by AI, but you might be replaced by someone using it, I think, has aged very well.

The biggest catch in all this is for entry-level professionals. Companies are going to find they can get by with fewer junior employees. That’s going to have a substantial impact on the bench of talent and succession planning. It won’t be a problem until it’s a problem, so the entire industry needs to be thinking about how to manage this trend.

4. The top PR and comms use cases for AI

PR is using AI and respondents to this survey identified the following as the top use cases:

73% said brainstorming ideas, campaign concepts, or headlines;
68% said writing or refining press releases, pitches, or other content;
55% said researching topics, journalists, or trends;
36% said drafting or scheduling social media posts; and
30% said analyzing data or generating reports.

Perspective: The AI use cases I use most often are a) brainstorming, b) summarization of long-form content to see if it deserves a closer look, c) research. I’ve found AI is a good ‘sounding board,’ too. That’s incredibly valuable as a solo consultant. It’s rare that AI ever gives me an ‘answer,’ but the exchange often leads to new ideas to pursue.

Here are some of the prompts I’ll give to AI:

What is John Doe’s email address?

Identify reporters from XYZ publication who have covered ABC in the last six months.

Has Jane Doe ever covered ABC topic?

Summarize the key themes of John Doe’s coverage in the last year.

Has Jane Doe ever spoken publicly about pitching preferences?

Does XYZ publication report from a certain political perspective?

For publications that publish OpEds, but do not have a dedicated opinion editor: who is the best contact to pitch an OpEd?

What studies or surveys about XYZ trend have been published in the last year?

Obviously, I also use generative AI to make custom images; it’s 1,000 times better than a stock image in my book.

That’s just a small sample I’ve pulled from my AI history in the last week. It’s just amazing to be able to ask AI for an answer, where previously, it would have taken 20 minutes of clicking around on a news site to find whatever it is I’m looking for.

A key consideration is that I always take AI answers as a suggestion that needs to be vetted. If it says a study was written, I ask for links and check out the identified study. If AI suggests a reporter to pitch, I review the masthead and reporting history to corroborate the suggestion.

Sometimes the suggestions are good, sometimes they are not, but in the long run, AI saves me a lot of time. The catch is you need to know the right questions to ask. That comes from work experience, which is why I find AI is an asset for SMEs, but it could be misleading for comms professionals without it.