Originally published: October 25, 2010 · Updated: June 16, 2026

In October 2010 the PR industry was running through a wave of holding-company acquisitions of independent firms. The thesis at the time: M&A activity proved the category was maturing, ROI was real, and growth was sustainable through the recession. I wrote then that the field was reinventing itself, that the playing field was being cleared, and that the operators who built right would compound through the next decade. The calls held. The 2026 version of the same M&A story is the second wave — driven by AI Communications rather than digital integration — and it is reshaping the industry again.

The 2010 thesis, restated

Five tips from the original piece:

  • Free media. Real media relations skills, real journalist relationships, real story placements.
  • Strategic planning. Hire a firm that asks the right questions about audience and market. Refuse the consultancy that needs six months to issue a deck.
  • The message. One coherent story that covers the whole business, not a different pitch for every channel.
  • Evaluation. Stop counting clips. Measure reputation movement, behavior change, market position.
  • Cost. The math works. Every dollar invested in well-run PR produces a return that exceeds the campaign budget over a long-enough window.

All five aged correctly. Free media is still the engine. Strategic planning that produces operational outputs in weeks, not quarters, still differentiates winners. Message coherence still beats channel fragmentation. Evaluation moved from clip count to share of voice to outcome-based KPIs to — in 2026 — Citation Share inside AI engines. The cost math still works.

The 2010 to 2025 M&A wave, restated

The acquisition activity I cited in 2010 turned into a decade of compounding. Major moves worth noting:

  • WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, Interpublic, and Havas continued absorbing independent firms across the 2010s.
  • MDC Partners merged with Stagwell in 2021 to form Stagwell Inc., a publicly traded marketing and communications holding company anchored by Mark Penn.
  • Real Chemistry built a healthcare-communications platform through acquisitions of 21Grams, Avant Healthcare, and Linus Health Insights, ultimately recapitalizing with New Mountain Capital.
  • Brunswick Group expanded its strategic-communications platform globally through organic growth and selective acquisitions.
  • Edelman continued as the largest independent through the 2010s and into the 2020s while diversifying revenue away from earned-media-only mandates.

The 2010 prediction that the field was consolidating was correct. The 2025 prediction is that a second consolidation wave is now underway, driven by the same logic but applied to a new capability: AI Communications, Generative Engine Optimization, and AI Visibility research. Holding companies are buying or building these practices because the demand curve from clients is steepening faster than the holding companies can hire and train against it.

What 2010 did not yet see

The 2010 piece treated PR as a maturing trade with one or two more cycles of M&A ahead. It did not anticipate that the next category-defining capability — AI Communications — would emerge from a technology shift the holding companies did not control and could not easily build into the legacy stack. The 2026 result: independents with AI Communications practices are growing faster than holding-company subsidiaries. Stagwell, PRovoke Media, Holmes Report, and PRWeek all flagged the same pattern across 2024 and 2025 data — independent firms with native AI capabilities outpacing holding-company comparables on revenue growth and on new-business win rates.

5W AI Communications repositioned in 2024 around this exact shift. The firm runs the entire AI Communications stack — Citation Audits, AI Visibility research, GEO programs, integrated earned-paid-owned-AI campaigns — as a native capability rather than as a bolt-on. The thesis is the same one the 2010 piece argued under different vocabulary: the firms that build the next capability before the market demands it own the next decade.

The 2026 tips

  • Free media still matters. Citation Share matters more. A New York Times mention that the AI engines retrieve and synthesize is more valuable than a New York Times mention that the engines miss. Optimize for retrieval surface, not just audience.
  • Strategic planning starts with an AI Visibility Audit. Before the brief, before the budget, before the campaign — run the client's category through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. The audit reveals what the program is actually trying to fix.
  • The message has to work for human readers and for retrieval systems. Named entities, structured data, primary-source links, schema markup. The same piece of content reads to a journalist and to the engine. Both audiences matter now.
  • Evaluation measures Citation Share alongside legacy KPIs. Share of voice and share of conversation are still useful. Share of answer inside the AI engines is the new procurement-grade metric.
  • Cost still favors the operator. PR remains the most efficient marketing line item per dollar deployed. AI Communications expands that efficiency because the corpus assets keep producing retrievals long after the campaign ends.

The 2010 piece was right that the field was in a period of reinvention. The 2026 version is a sharper reinvention. The firms that read the AI Communications shift correctly are running the new playbook. The firms that did not are being acquired by the ones that did, or being eclipsed by independents that built the capability first.

AI Communications is the discipline of becoming the answer inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. The 2026 M&A activity is rearranging the industry around it. The 2010 framework still applies. The next round of winners is being decided right now.

Ronn Torossian
Founder and Chairman, 5W AI Communications