A global survey of 858 marketing and public relations professionals conducted by Outcomes Rocket has revealed a profession gaining strategic importance faster than it is building the structures needed to fully capitalise on it.

According to Outcomes Rocket, seven in ten organisations now consider PR important to their go-to-market efforts and 73% expect it to become even more strategic in the next two years, yet critical gaps in measurement, revenue alignment and AI readiness are holding the profession back from delivering its full commercial value.

The survey identifies artificial intelligence as the primary force reshaping PR practice, with 63.5% of respondents saying AI-driven search has already changed their PR strategy and 44.8% having increased their PR budget specifically in response to AI search developments.

Despite this, only 17.1% of organisations prioritise AI visibility and citations as a defined objective and only 21.8% treat Authority, Expertise and Trustworthiness, the signals that determine brand visibility in AI-generated search results, as a defined strategic priority.

The measurement gap is equally significant. Traditional metrics including mentions and impressions still dominate how organisations assess PR performance. Only 43.7% track website traffic from PR activity and just 13.1% share earned media with sales teams, with only 6.1% using it for sales enablement.

Yet 84.1% of respondents believe PR will play a much larger role in sales enablement and revenue outcomes within two years, suggesting the profession recognises the gap even as it struggles to close it.

PR currently receives an average of 14% of total marketing budget across surveyed organisations, with 47.7% reporting year-over-year investment increases. Media relations remains the most adopted tactic at 66.7%, followed by brand and reputation management at 54.1 percent and digital PR at 52.7%. Brand awareness dominates PR objectives at 66.3%, while direct sales support is prioritised by only 14.4% of organisations.

The Outcomes Rocket research makes clear that public relations is at an inflection point. The external environment, driven by AI search, has elevated the strategic value of earned authority, third-party credibility and trusted content in ways that play directly to PR’s core competencies.

The internal challenge is closing the gaps between strategic awareness and structured execution, between PR output and commercial application, between traditional measurement and the metrics that matter in an AI-driven information landscape.

The organisations that navigate this transition successfully will not simply have better PR. They will have a more credible, more visible and more commercially effective market presence than those that do not.