The Q4 and full-year 2025 earnings numbers are starting to come in for the marketing services holding companies and independent players such as Edelman.
Publicis was first to report and posted impressive numbers on Tuesday that would have been the envy of its peers in the space.
Driven by data and AI, the French holdco posted full-year organic revenue growth of 5.6%, 5.9% in Q4, with operating income up 8.1% to $2.73 billion on net revenue of $16.49 billion (€14.5 billion) in 2025. The U.S. grew 5.2%. Operating profit margin was 18.2%.
Unlike the other holding companies, which are shedding jobs by the thousands, Publicis is hiring, adding about 5,800 employees in 2025.
Publicis doesn’t specifically break out its PR numbers, but last year it officially categorized its revenue into three segments: Connected Media (60% of 2025 net revenue), Intelligent Creativity (26%) and Technology (14%).
PR, mostly represented by MSL, sits in the Intelligent Creativity bucket, which grew “mid-single digits” in the calendar year. MSL’s global revenue was $438.5 million in 2024 according to PRWeek’s Agency Business Report.
In the indie agency world it was another tough year at Edelman, where revenue shrank 4% globally to $950 million and 8.1% to $541 million in the U.S. in 2025, the third year in a row of decline at the world’s largest PR firm in its biggest market. We will see whether that performance is enough to regain the top spot in the U.S. PR agency rankings from Real Chemistry, which usurped Edelman in that spot in 2024.
CEO Richard Edelman pointed to a more positive Q4 and green shoots of recovery that he expects to continue throughout 2026, including more than 30 global client wins. “We went into [2025] going down,” he said. “We’re going into 2026 going up,” he added, emphasizing his “aggression and confidence” for the year ahead.
“I feel a lot better going into this year, a lot more certain of the performance,” Edelman said, illustrating his point with activations including a Super Bowl ad for 2025 client win the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation that will run during Sunday’s Big Game.
“We’ve never done that and it was a program that started in earned [media] and is culminating in paid,” he added. “That’s our advantage. The holding companies don’t do that.”
The PR industry needs strong agency brands, and given that Edelman is such a bellwether for the sector you have to hope that its CEO’s optimism for 2026 proves to be a portent for a turnaround at his eponymous firm. But the proof is in the pudding and we’ve heard similar rhetoric in prior years. Let’s watch this space.
Omnicom is scheduled to report its Q4 and full-year earnings next week, but it may still be delayed. WPP is set to report on February 26. We will have a much clearer picture of the PR and holding company sector’s overall health after that.
What was slightly shocking was the performance of Publicis’ share price following such positive results. Rather than spiking and leading the way to a more positive outlook for the marketing and advertising sector on the financial markets, the Arthur Sadoun-led organization’s share price on the French markets fell 9.24% by the end of the day its results were released.
On the same day, Omnicom slipped even further, dropping 11.15% on the NYSE. WPP dropped 10.13% in London and Havas fell 7.48% in Amsterdam. The marcomms holdco sector got caught up in a market-wide sell-off prompted by new products launched by major AI player Anthropic — but it hasn’t yet turned back upward.
It seems the sector can’t get out of its own way whatever it does: Publicis posting impressive numbers, Omnicom acquiring Interpublic Group and making massive cost savings across the newly combined operations and prioritizing data and AI, and WPP bringing on new CEO Cindy Rose.
It’s almost as though the sector needs to apply some of its marketing techniques to itself to present a better picture of the advertising and communications industries to its major stakeholders.
I see PR as in a different bucket that, while it is certainly being disrupted by AI, will always rely on smart human counsel at the top level of corporate affairs, CEO and C-suite advisory, crisis comms, employee engagement and other services that are in more demand than ever.
But we need to see the independent players such as Edelman and big holdco firms including Weber Shandwick, FleishmanHillard, Burson and Golin posting great numbers to prove the theory is working in practice.
It’s going to be a roller coaster year in the PR and marcomms industries, and massive change is ahead across 2026. Time for agencies to step up and demonstrate their value.
