Speaking as an agency owner, I've seen a massive shift of marketing budgets away from advertising and into content marketing. Adding value through content has always been the most predictable, sustainable way to build inbound customer acquisition.

Businesses are now realizing the ROI of paid channels continues to diminish (if it was ever really there at all given how fake many of the reported metrics seem to be). Instead they are finally understanding that their role isnt to shove marketing messages down peoples throats, but instead to earn their attention via the value their content can add to existing needs.

Content + PR will become the defacto way most companies market themselves, where PR is just multi-channel distribution of the content being created by the brand.