Advertising, public relations, and related services
This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in creating mass-media advertising or public relation campaigns; placing advertising in media for advertisers or advertising agencies; selling media time or space to advertisers or advertising agencies for media owners; creating and implementing indoor or outdoor display advertising campaigns; creating and implementing direct mail advertising campaigns; delivering (except by mail) advertising materials or samples; creating and implementing specialty advertising campaigns; providing related services, such as sign painting and lettering, welcoming services and window trimming services. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 6,360
- Under 10 employeesA
- 78%
- Establishments · USA
- 38,694
- Employment · USA
- 467,211
- Payroll · USA
- $42.2B
Size and shape
How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.
Canadian establishments by number of employeesA
Of 6,360 Canadian establishments with employees, 78% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.
Where they areA
Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 541, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.
Professional licensing is the barrier and the principal's time is the ceiling. Firms are built from a book of clients, and an aging partner group makes acquisition and succession the common entry.
- Who sets the price
- The firm, by reputation, against hourly-rate comparison.
- The software it runs on
- Practice management, time and billing, and a specialist tool per profession — the densest vertical-software territory in the economy.
Market screens and studies
Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.
Software serving this industry
The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.
Agencies are the buyer most likely to solve this with a horizontal tool they already have — the project-management record at 541514 is the competitor here as much as Deltek is. Margins are thin, procurement is the founder, and the specialist premium over a generic tool is hard to defend at renewal. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.
This category consolidated out from under new entrants in under three years, and the buyers were strategics rather than sponsors. Perion bought Hivestack — Canadian, Montréal — for about US$100M; T-Mobile bought Vistar Media in 2025; and in November 2025 Broadsign, also Montréal, bought Place Exchange in its fourth acquisition in seven years, ending with roughly 1.8 million programmatically transactable screens and 370 staff. Note the Canadian concentration: two of the three platforms that defined programmatic DOOH were built in Montréal, which makes this the strongest domestic comparable in this research — and both are now inside larger owners. The exit path is real and the independent path has closed.
And what every business buys · 25 generic categories
Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.
Companies in this industry · 16
Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.
| Company | Filed under | Revenue | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeltekPrivate | Advertising, public relations, and related services5418 | — | 1/6 |
| Adobe WorkfrontPrivate | Advertising, public relations, and related services5418 | — | 2/6 |
| AnthiasPrivate | Display advertising541850 | — | 1/10 |
| BoostrPrivate | Advertising, public relations, and related services5418 | — | 3/6 |
| BroadSignPrivate | Display advertising541850 | — | 2/10 |
| Clear ChannelNYSE:CCO | Display advertising541850 | — | 3/10 |
| co-operativePrivate | Advertising, public relations, and related services5418 | — | 4/6 |
| info-beamerPrivate | Display advertising541850 | — | 4/10 |
| LamarNASDAQ:LAMR | Display advertising541850 | — | 5/10 |
| OUTFRONTNYSE:OUT | Display advertising541850 | — | 6/10 |
| Pattison OutdoorPrivate | Display advertising541850 | — | 7/10 |
| Perion NetworkNASDAQ:PERI | Display advertising541850 | — | 8/10 |
| ProductivePrivate | Advertising, public relations, and related services5418 | — | 5/6 |
| ScoroPrivate | Advertising, public relations, and related services5418 | — | 6/6 |
| Vistar MediaPrivate | Display advertising541850 | — | 9/10 |
And 1 more on the companies page.
Who works here
The occupations employed in Professional, scientific and technical services, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Tagged to this industry
Concentrated in this sectorA
These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.
And the jobs every business has
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 78% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.
Inside this industry
8 rows sit directly beneath 5418, and 17 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 54181 | Advertising agencies | 3,218 | screened at 5418 |
| 54182 | Public relations services | 688 | screened at 5418 |
| 54183 | Media buying agencies | 133 | screened at 5418 |
| 54184 | Media representatives | 322 | screened at 5418 |
| 54185 | Display advertising | 483 | Out-of-Home AdvertisingProgrammatic DOOH & Digital Signage Software |
| 54186 | Direct mail advertising | 94 | screened at 5418 |
| 54187 | Advertising material distribution services | 145 | screened at 5418 |
| 54189 | Other services related to advertising | 1,277 | screened at 5418 |