Edelman’s growth story has stalled. For the third year running, the world’s most visible PR agency has seen its global revenue contract, underscoring how vulnerable even market leaders are to sectoral headwinds, client budget resets, and shifting demand for communications services. The 2025 numbers signal less a cyclical blip and more a structural challenge: America is dragging performance down, while pockets of growth outside the U.S. are not yet large enough to offset the decline.
DJE Holdings-owned Edelman reported like-for-like global revenue of $950 million in 2025, down 4% from $986 million in 2024, keeping the agency below the $1 billion threshold it first crossed in 2022. The decline, adjusted for currency movements, marks the third consecutive year of contraction — a rare losing streak for a firm long positioned as the industry’s bellwether.
The real pressure point remains the United States, which still accounts for more than half of Edelman’s global business. U.S. revenue fell 8.1% to $541 million, deepening a multi-year slide that has already cost the agency its status as the largest PR firm in the country by revenue. In 2024, Edelman ceded that title to Real Chemistry — a shift driven in part by the latter’s AI-heavy healthcare arm, Swoop, which later spun out as a separate entity.
Outside the U.S., the picture is more nuanced. EMEA edged up 0.5% to $243 million, powered by sharp gains in the Gulf — UAE up 33% and Saudi Arabia up 68%, reflecting stronger corporate communications and public affairs demand in the region. Latin America grew 16.7% to $38 million, with Argentina and Brazil leading the rebound, while Canada rose 8.6% to $40 million.
APAC, however, slipped 1.7% to $87 million, even though India and Southeast Asia posted 7.5% growth, highlighting how uneven regional performance can dilute overall momentum.
The 2025 figures incorporate contributions from United Entertainment Group, Edelman DXI (data & intelligence), and Edelman Smithfield (financial communications), but exclude sister agencies Zeno Group and Ruth within the DJE portfolio — a reminder that group-level performance can look different from standalone agency results.
On the services side, marketing and communications emerged as Edelman’s strongest engine, growing 6.3%, followed by financial communications at 1.7%. Yet these gains were insufficient to counter deeper sectoral pain.
The sharpest drag came from health (–7%) and food & beverage (–10.7%), two pillars of Edelman’s U.S. business. The agency attributed the softness to pricing pressures and disruptions linked to GLP-1 drugs reshaping food, beverage, and wellness marketing. Along with CPG, these categories form three of Edelman’s five core U.S. “growth engines,” amplifying the regional slowdown.
There were bright spots. Technology grew 7.7% globally — including a robust 6.5% in the U.S. and 30.8% in Canada — while financial services advanced 5%, reflecting steadier demand for reputation, regulatory, and crisis communications.
Edelman’s 2025 performance underscores a broader industry reality: growth is increasingly fragmented across markets and sectors, and reliance on the U.S. is becoming a strategic vulnerability. Until non-U.S. regions scale materially or health and CPG recover, the path back to $1 billion looks more marathon than sprint.
