Why the Cision 2026 Report Gets PR's Future Wrong

Cision just released their "Inside PR 2026" report with great fanfare. Nearly 600 PR professionals surveyed. Comprehensive insights on AI adoption, resource constraints, and the shifting media landscape. The industry nodded along approvingly.

Here's the problem: They diagnosed the disease perfectly, then prescribed the wrong medicine.

According to Cision's data, 60% of PR teams cite the rapidly shifting media landscape as their biggest challenge. Another 58% point to resource pressure — doing more with less. These are real problems. But Cision's solution? More media monitoring. More dashboards. More tools to track what's not working.

This is like giving someone with a broken leg a more accurate pedometer. Sure, they'll know exactly how little they're walking, but they still can't walk.

The Media Monitoring Industrial Complex

The report reveals that 91% of PR professionals are now using generative AI, with 73% applying it to idea generation and 68% using it for writing. That's great. AI can help you pitch faster and track coverage better.

But here's what the report glosses over: Better tracking of failed pitches doesn't solve the fundamental problem that most pitches fail.

Cision found that "media monitoring remains the most relied-on tool for teams." Of course it does — they sell it. But what does monitoring tell you? That your pitch didn't work. That the journalist you emailed ignored you. That your press release went into the void.

The industry has convinced itself that the solution to bad PR results is better measurement of bad PR results. It's not. The solution is guaranteed placements.

Think about it: If you're a founder who hired a PR agency on a $10,000 monthly retainer, what do you care about more — a detailed report showing your 47 pitches got zero responses, or a single Forbes placement? The media monitoring industry wants you to believe the report adds value. It doesn't. It just documents failure with prettier charts.

What Founders Actually Need

Here's the brutal truth that Cision's report dances around: Founders don't care about your media monitoring dashboard. They care about being in Forbes. They care about being cited by Perplexity and ChatGPT. They care about tier-one placements that drive pipeline.

The report shows brand awareness remains PR's top priority (36% of respondents), while executives are increasingly focused on revenue and ROI — 32% of executives cite it as their primary goal. This creates what Cision calls an "alignment gap."

But the real gap isn't between executives and their teams. It's between what the PR industry sells and what clients actually need. The report found that 38% of PR teams cite measurement and ROI as a major challenge. Translation: They can't prove their work drives results.

You know what doesn't have a measurement problem? Performance-based PR. When you only pay for actual placements, ROI becomes crystal clear.

According to research by Forbes Agency Council, 70% of PR retainer clients churn within six months due to lack of results. That's not an industry problem — that's a business model problem. When your entire model is built on charging for activity rather than outcomes, of course clients leave when they realize they're paying for nothing.

The Agility Theater

One of the report's most damning findings: 33% of executives describe their teams as "extremely agile," but only 14% of employees agree. That's not an agility gap — that's a reality gap.

Why the disconnect? Because "agility" in traditional PR means pivoting your pitch strategy faster, updating your media monitoring searches more frequently, and having real-time dashboards showing you real-time failure metrics.

Real agility would be: "We need press coverage for our product launch in two weeks. Can you guarantee placements?" The answer from most PR agencies is some version of "We'll do our best, but we can't guarantee anything."

That's not agility. That's just uncertainty with better tracking.

The report identifies structural barriers like team size and organizational design (63%) and slow approvals (53%) as factors holding teams back. But the real barrier isn't organizational — it's the business model. When you can't guarantee outcomes, you have to sell process. And selling process means bureaucracy, approvals, and activity reports.

Performance PR doesn't have this problem. When you only get paid for published placements, there's no need for approval chains on pitch strategies. The outcome is the only metric that matters.

AI Won't Save Traditional PR

The report celebrates that 50% of PR teams are integrating AI into their workflows. Cision CEO Guy Abramo says, "The teams that can blend human insight with intelligent automation will be the ones who define the next era of PR."

He's half right. AI will absolutely transform PR. But not in the way the media monitoring industry hopes.

AI doesn't make bad pitches work faster. It doesn't magically turn "we'll try" into "we'll deliver." What AI actually does is make the inefficiency of traditional PR models even more obvious. When you can generate a hundred pitches in an hour, it becomes even clearer that pitch volume was never the problem — guaranteed access to journalists was.

The future of PR isn't better AI-powered monitoring of failed pitches. It's AI-powered intelligence combined with actual placement guarantees. It's performance PR that only charges when you get results.

Cision's own data shows 40% of teams using AI-driven media monitoring and nearly a third relying on AI-powered reporting tools. That's investment in better measurement. But investment in better measurement of bad outcomes is still investment in failure.

What Performance PR Looks Like

Performance-based PR operates on a radically different premise: You don't pay for pitching activity. You pay for published placements.

No retainers. No "we sent 47 pitches this month" reports. No monitoring dashboards tracking impressions from placements you didn't get. Just: Did you secure the placement? If yes, you get paid. If no, you don't.

This model solves every challenge Cision's report identifies:

• Resource pressure? You're not paying monthly retainers for uncertain outcomes.
• ROI challenges? ROI is binary: placement secured = cost justified.
• Alignment gap? Executives and teams are aligned around actual placements, not activity metrics.
• Agility? True agility is knowing exactly what you'll get and when.

The traditional PR industry built a business model around uncertainty, then sold monitoring tools to help you measure the uncertainty. Performance PR eliminates the uncertainty entirely.

The Real Future of PR

Cision's report identifies storytelling (59%) and media relations (44%) as the most in-demand skills for 2026. They're not wrong — but they're thinking about these skills in the wrong context.

Storytelling matters. Media relations matter. But in 2026 and beyond, these skills only matter if they result in actual placements. The era of "we built great relationships" and "we told a compelling story" as success metrics is over.

The rise of performance-based models across marketing has been inevitable for years. SEO shifted to performance. Paid media shifted to performance. Content marketing shifted to performance.

PR is the last holdout, clinging to retainers and activity-based billing while the rest of marketing moved to outcome-based compensation. Cision's report shows an industry wrestling with measurement and ROI because the business model makes measurement difficult by design.

Performance PR doesn't have a measurement problem. When you only get paid for Forbes placements, you know exactly whether you got a Forbes placement. The measurement is binary and instant.

Consider the implications: In a performance model, the agency has to actually deliver placements to get paid. That means building real relationships with journalists. That means creating genuinely newsworthy angles. That means doing the hard work instead of sending volume pitches and hoping something sticks.

The retainer model creates the wrong incentives. Agencies get paid whether placements happen or not, so the incentive is to maximize billable hours, not placement success. Performance PR aligns incentives: agencies only succeed when clients succeed.

What This Means for You

If you're a founder or marketing leader reading Cision's report and nodding along about "shifting media landscapes" and "resource constraints," ask yourself a harder question:

Would these be problems if your PR partner guaranteed placements?

If the answer is no — and it probably is — then the problem isn't the media landscape. It's the business model you're buying into.

The media monitoring industry wants you to believe that better tracking is the answer. More dashboards. More AI-powered alerts. More sophisticated measurement of uncertain outcomes.

The actual answer is simpler and more radical: Stop paying for activity. Start paying for results.

The future of PR isn't better monitoring. It's guaranteed placements, AI-optimized for maximum citation impact, billed only when delivered. That's what performance PR offers. That's what founders actually need.

Cision's report is right about the challenges. They're just selling the wrong solution.