Budgets tighten, AI rises: PR tech stack in 2024 shifts to data-driven approach

23 September 2024

A recent survey by Prowly paints a picture of a PR industry at a crossroads in 2024. As budgets shrink, and demand for measurable results grows, professionals are turning to AI not for content creation anymore, but for data analysis and reporting.

Budget constraints persist, agencies hit hardest by cuts while in-house teams show resilience:

43% of PR professionals canceled paid tools in 2024
Agencies hit hardest: 48% made cuts
In-house teams and sole practitioners more resilient: 39% and 38% reduced spending respectively

Budget cuts collide with performance proof:

48% struggle to prove the value of their work, up from 41% in 2022
39% prioritize tracking and measuring efforts in 2024, up from 23% in 2022
Use of sales metrics in PR measurement increased from 13% to 19%
Demand for faster, comprehensive PR reports tripled from 6% in 2022 to 22% in 2024

Overall AI adoption reaches 70%, solo practitioners catch up in AI use, narrowing gap with agencies.

However, 30% of PR pros still don't use AI tools. This could be due to concerns about AI's reliability for analytical tasks or difficulties integrating these tools into existing workflows.

Sole practitioners: Largest adoption increase from 55% to 70%
Agencies lead with 72% adoption rate
In-house teams close behind at 67%

AI applications shift, usage for content creation and idea generation slightly drops (3% less compared to last year), while analytics and reporting grow significantly:

Monitoring analysis: Sharp rise from 8% to 31%
Research: Significant jump from 53% to 67%
Reporting: More than doubled from 10% to 25%

The PR tech stack of 2024 reflects an industry adapting to twin challenges: financial pressures and the need to demonstrate concrete results. Unlike last year's brief flirtation with AI-generated content, this year sees AI expected to be incorporated strategically into analytics and reporting tools.

Explore the full report here

Methodology

We interviewed over 250 PR professionals from companies ranging in size from 1 to 500+ employees to gather their opinions and insights on PR tech stack.The participants of administered online survey primarily consisted of PR professionals from North America and Europe, including those from in-house teams, agencies, and solo practitioners.

About Prowly

Prowly is a SaaS platform that helps public relations professionals save time on everyday tasks, reach more journalists and report on brand performance. Prowly is used by over 7,000 customers from more than 90 countries. Prowly was acquired by Semrush, a leading online visibility management SaaS platform, in 2020.