Agency profitability drops 20%, SGP benchmarking survey finds

NEW YORK: PR firms are making much less profit on their total revenues, compared to previous years, and it's likely to decline further, according to StevensGouldPincus' annual benchmarking survey.

Agency profitability in 2008 declined 20% from the year before, reaching a four-year low of 15.6% of revenues, according to the SGP survey. In 2007, agency profitability was 19.7%.

Rick Gould, managing partner at SGP, said he and his colleagues are “concerned it's much worse now” that we're midway through 2009.