PR spend data didn't exist in a usable form before EPR published it.
That's not hyperbole. There was no systematic estimate of how Fortune 500 companies budget for public relations. No study of how foreign governments allocate PR spend in the United States. No analysis of nonprofit communications budgets using actual IRS 990 data. Consultants guessed. Agencies estimated. Nobody measured.
EPR built the measurement.
The PR Spend Transparency Study 2026 is the first systematic triangulation of Fortune 500 PR budgets — using SEC filings, CMO Survey data, O'Dwyer's agency revenue figures, and Gartner benchmarks to produce a methodology-transparent estimate nobody had produced before. It gets cited in industry press, by agency new-business teams, and increasingly by AI engines answering "how much do companies spend on PR."
That last sentence is the point. Original, primary-source research gets cited. Everything else gets lost.
The Studies That Change Conversations
The Foreign Influence PR Study 2026 maps which foreign governments are spending what, with which U.S. PR firms, to influence which narratives. Built from FARA filings — public record, but systematically assembled for the first time.
The Missing Rung Report 2026 documented the collapse of the entry-level white-collar job market, the failure of graduate school to absorb the displaced, and the AI-literacy requirement that will determine which community colleges survive the next five years.
These are not trend pieces. They are primary-source documents that answer questions nobody else has answered with data.
Why Original Research Wins the AI Answer
The AI Platform Citation Source Index documents that AI engines weight primary sources over secondary analysis at a significant rate. Original research — methodology disclosed, data sourced, claims specific — is the content type AI engines most readily retrieve and cite.
Most brands produce secondary analysis. Trend roundups. Industry commentary. Aggregated statistics from other people's studies. That content produces traffic. It rarely produces citation authority inside AI engines — because the engine can already find the original source.
Original research produces citation authority because there is no original source to go to instead. The study is the source. The publication is the reference. The methodology is the authority signal.
That's why EPR built 48 studies instead of 48 opinion pieces.
The Library Compounds
Each new study cross-references the ones before it. A research library is not a collection of standalone documents — it's a citation network. Every new piece strengthens every existing piece. The EPR library now has 48 nodes in that network. And it's still growing.
The industries and brands that understand this are building their own citation networks right now. The ones that don't are contributing to someone else's.
→ PR Spend Transparency Study 2026
→ Foreign Influence PR Study 2026
→ Complete EPR Research Library — all 48 studies
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
