The data is in, and it’s unambiguous: earned media is the new discovery engine in our increasingly AI-first world.
What is old is new again, at least in digital marketing and search…
Gartner’s latest 2026 Communications Predictions are blunt: By 2027, mass adoption of public LLMs as a replacement for traditional search will drive a 2x increase in PR and earned media budgets. Their recommendation to CMOs? Reallocate spending from paid channels straight into earned media and PR.
Why the sudden urgency?
Muck Rack’s “What Is AI Reading?” report (February 2026) analyzed more than 1 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. The results:
- 94% of all AI citations come from non-paid sources.
- Earned media alone accounts for 82%.
- Journalism makes up 20–30% depending on the query window.
- Press releases increased 5x from July to December 2025, now representing about 1% of total citations but showing explosive growth in tools like ChatGPT and Gemini.
- Paid placements and advertising? They barely register.
Even more telling: more than half of AI citations come from content published in the last 12 months, with the highest citation rate occurring within seven days of publication. Press release citations grew 5x between July and December 2025. AI systems love fresh, editorially validated content.
And the payoff is real. Semrush’s 2025 study on AI search impact found that visitors arriving via AI-driven discovery convert at 4.4 times the rate of traditional organic search visitors.
This isn’t theory. Third-party earned media — the kind that comes from journalists, analysts, and credible publications — carries the exact editorial trust signal that LLMs prioritize over backlinks, technical SEO, or paid ads. The playbook that SEO professionals spent two decades perfecting for Google is now being handed to PR teams.
Earned media isn’t just more credible. It is now more discoverable and offers higher conversions.
If your marketing mix still leans heavily on paid channels (which Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey showed at 30.6% of total budgets), the shift is coming whether you are ready for it (or not). The smartest B2B tech companies are doubling down on PR now, treating earned coverage as the foundation for every other channel.
In addition to increasing discovery in the emerging AI-first world, earned media offers the opportunity to drive awareness through thought-leadership and is a a force multiplier to drive marketing and lead generation campaigns.
Let’s connect to learn how you can fast-track an earned media campaign that helps drive AI discoverability while building awareness and thought-leadership.
