The best argument for PR? Surprisingly, it's AI

In this solocast, On Top of PR host Jason Mudd explains why earned media now drives visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and AI search. 

Tune in to learn more!

Watch the episode here:

5 things you’ll learn during the full episode:

1. Why earned media is the primary driver of visibility in AI-generated search
2. How ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude determine which brands to recommend
3. What the 2% pitch overlap statistic means for PR and marketing teams
4. Why media velocity and recency matter more than one big placement
5. What to do right now: three actions to strengthen your brand's AI visibility

Listen to the episode here:

Quotables

• “Earned media is what AI trusts.” — @jasonmudd9
• “The right earned media in the right outlets at the right frequency is the primary lever for brand visibility and AI-generated search. Not one of the levers, it's the primary lever.” — @jasonmudd9
• “The brands that figure this out first are going to own the narrative inside the AI tools their buyers are already using every day.” — @jasonmudd9
• “99% of links cited by AI come from unpaid media.” — @jasonmudd9

If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to share it with a colleague or friend. You may also support us through Buy Me a Coffee or by leaving us a quick podcast review.

Resources

Guest’s contact info and resources:

• Jason Mudd on X
• Jason Mudd on LinkedIn
• Muck Rack: Earned media still drives 84% of AI citations
• Gartner: Predicts 2026: Top Predictions to Inform 2026 Comms Strategies

Additional Resources:

• Why earned media is so powerful in the age of AI and GEO
• Why AI tools now rely on earned media
• How earned media gets AI to remember your brand
• Axia’s AIVisibility services
• Listen to more episodes of the On Top of PR with Jason Mudd podcast
• Find out more about Axia Public Relations

If you like this episode, you're going to love this:

• The PR playbook for getting recommended
• Embedded AI: The future of PR and communication workflows
• How to stay ahead of AI in communication and marketing

Recorded:  June 06, 2026 

Find more On Top of PR episodes on: 

Transcript

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00]

Jason

The right earned media in the right outlets at the right frequency is the primary lever for brand visibility and AI generated search. Not one of the levers, it's the primary lever because paid media is invisible in AI. SEO alone doesn't cut it. The only thing that reliably moves the needle on what AI says about your brand is earned media.

[00:00:28]

Jason

Let me ask you something. The last time a buyer found your company, what's your best guess how they found you? Google, a referral, a trade publication, other news media coverage, an ad they clicked on? Here's what's changing fast. More and more your buyers aren't starting with a search engine. They're starting with a conversation. They're typing a question into ChatGBT, Gemini, or Claude, and they're asking.

[00:00:54]

Jason

Who's the best company that does X? Or what do you know about Y before I make this decision?

[00:00:59]

Jason

And the answer they're getting back is either going to include your brand or it isn't. Today we're talking about what determines that. And the answer is going to surprise you because it has almost nothing to do with your advertising budget.

[00:01:13]

Jason

MuckRack, one of the leading platforms for PR and media intelligence software, has been running a study on this for the past year, three editions so far July 2025, December 2025, and May 2026. The latest analyzed more than 250 million links from responses generated by ChatGPT, Claude,

[00:01:34]

Jason

and Gemini. 25 million links. That's not a survey, that's not a focus group.

[00:01:41]

Jason

That's the actual data on what AI is reading, what it's trusting, and what it's building its answers from. And the headline has been the same every single time. Here's a quote from the CEO of MuckRack. Three editions in, the data keeps telling the same story. Earned media is what AI trusts. Earned media, not paid media, not ads, not sponsored content.

[00:02:07]

Jason

Not pay per click, the coverage your brand earns in real journalism is what determines your visibility inside AI generated answers. And here's why this isn't just one vendor or one company's data point. Gartner, one of the world's most respected research firms, just released their top predictions to inform 2026 communication strategies.

[00:02:31]

Jason

Their number one prediction? By 2027, mass adoption of public AI tools as a replacement for traditional search will drive a 2x increase in PR and earned media budgets. Two times double, double what the investments are today. And they back it up with traffic data. Chat GPT traffic grew 608%.

[00:02:58]

Jason

Year over year, perplexity 262%, while Google and Bing each declined 1%. This shift is already happening and it's happening quicker every day. When Mukrak and Gartner, Gartner are independently arriving at the same conclusion, that's not a trend, that's a structural shift in how buyers find brands.

[00:03:21]

Jason

Here's what the numbers actually show. About 99% of links cited by AI come from unpaid media. Paid content, advertorial content, that accounts for only 0.3% of citations. Press releases, about 1.1%. And within unpaid universal journalism,

[00:03:49]

Jason

Actual reporters writing actual news or feature coverage accounts for approximately 27% of everything AI cites. So if you're a chief marketing officer or a marketing leader at a corporation sitting on a budget that's heavily weighted towards paid media, here's the hard truth. You're investing significant dollars into channels that AI is almost entirely ignoring. The pitch gap.

[00:04:18]

Jason

The most important stat in this episode. Here's the finding that I think is most actionable and honestly the most uncomfortable. When research compared the journalists that PR teams are pitching, most often the journalist whose work AI actually cites or sources, the overlap was only 2%. 2%. That means 98% of pitching activity is pointed at journalists.

[00:04:46]

Jason

Who don't meaningfully influence what AI says about your brand. I think that's worth repeating. That means that 98% of pitching activity is pointed at journalists who don't meaningfully influence what AI says about your brand. Not because those journalists don't matter for other reasons, they might. But for AI visibility specifically, most pitching strategies are almost entirely misaligned.

[00:05:12]

Jason

There are a few other nuances worth knowing. First, recency matters more than people realize. The highest citation rate from AI happens within just seven days of publication. Seven days. So one big placement a year is not a strategy. Consistent, ongoing, news media velocity is. Second, the type of questions being asked determines what AI pools.

[00:05:39]

Jason

When someone asks about a trend-based question, what's happening in this industry right now?

[00:05:44]

Jason

Journalism citations appear more than twice as often as in how-to queries. So if you're not generating coverage consistently, you're not going to be in that window. Thirdly, it's not just big outlets that matter. Trade publications, niche B2B media, they show up significantly in what AI reads within specific industries.

[00:06:06]

Jason

This isn't just about landing Reuters or Forbes. It's about being in the right outlets in your specific niche category.

[00:06:15]

Jason

Let's talk about what this changes. Muckrat calls all of this generative engine optimization or GEO. And I want to take a moment with that framing because I think it's the right one. For years, PR's value has been measured in impressions, share a voice, clip counts, media value equivalency. And if you're a CMO, you probably spent time defending those metrics to a CFO who wanted to know what.

[00:06:41]

Jason

Any of it was actually worth. Here's the new argument. Strategic PR, the right earned media and the right outlets at the right frequency, is the primary lever for brand visibility and AI search. Not one of the levers, the primary lever. Because paid is invisible, search engine optimization alone doesn't cut it. GEO is not SEO 2.0.

[00:07:05]

Jason

The only thing that reliably moves the needle on what AI says about your brand is earned media.

[00:07:11]

Jason

Now, as a sidebar, I have strong feelings about the way we've measured PR previously and consistently. Measuring impression, share of voice, clip counts, media value equivalency. Those are not the best way to measure PR, but that's a solo cast for another day that I'll get to in the near future. let me know in the comments if this is something you'd like to hear about sooner than later, and we will expedite it. But I want to say this again. Strategic PR.

[00:07:36]

Jason

The right earned media in the right outlets at the right frequency is the primary lever for brand visibility and AI generated search. Not one of the levers, it's the primary lever because paid media is invisible in AI. SEO alone doesn't cut it. The only thing that reliably moves the needle on what AI says about your brand is earned media.

[00:08:01]

Jason

And your peers are already responding. Gartner found that when chief communication officers surveyed their own budget priorities, PR and earned media topped the list. Thirty-six percent were already anticipating increases. That was the highest of any category ahead of corporate brand, website, and social media. The smart money is moving in this direction.

[00:08:25]

Jason

And it's moving fast. The question is whether your money and investment is moving there also. Your buyers are asking AI questions about your category right now. AI is answering them. And the brands showing up in those categories are the ones with consistent, credible, earned media coverage. This isn't a future trend. This is happening today. The question is whether or not your brand is in that conversation or someone else's brand is.

[00:08:52]

Jason

Before I tell you what you should probably be doing right now based on this information, let me ask you to pause for a moment. If you find on top of PR useful, leaving a review is one of the simplest ways to support our show. Reviews help more people discover us, which helps us grow and continue to bring you strong guests and useful insights. As a thank you, we run a monthly drawing for podcast swag and an occasional gift from me. Here's how to enter.

[00:09:19]

Jason

go to ratethispodcast.com slash on top of PR. Leave us a review, take a screenshot, email it to podcast at axia pr. The good news is once you enter, you stay in the drawing until you win.

[00:09:31]

Jason

It only takes two minutes and you're in until you win. The reason we need you to send us a screenshot is because we may not know that your username is JBird69 Toronto. And then we have no way of reaching out to you and telling you that you won. So if you take a minute, leave us a review, take a screenshot, email it to us, we will track it and let you know as soon as you win.

[00:09:52]

Jason

All right, let's get back to the show.

[00:09:53]

Jason

I've got three actions for what you should do right now.

[00:09:56]

Jason

Let's ask ourselves, so what do you actually do with this information I've shared? Here are three things worth doing right now. One, audit your current pitch strategy against AI citation data. If you have a PR partner like Axia, ask us: are we pitching the journalists whose work is actually being cited by AI in our industry? That 2% overlap number should make this a priority conversation. Two, think about media velocity.

[00:10:23]

Jason

not just media placement. A single big hit once a quarter isn't going to keep your brand top of mind inside that seven-day recency window that matters most. Consistent coverage across the right mix of national trade and niche outlets is the discipline that builds AI visibility over time. Third, frame how your organization thinks about PR investments. This isn't about clips and impressions. It really never was.

[00:10:51]

Jason

It's about whether your brand story is being baked into the answers your buyers are getting from AI. Gartner calls this answer engine optimization, AEO, and they're explicit that building visibility and reputation in this new reality requires communication specific skills, not just marketing nor search and optimization. That's a business development conversation, not a communication checkbox.

[00:11:19]

Jason

Here's what I want you to take away today. The research is clear and it's coming from two independent sources: Muckrak on the data side, Gartner on the analyst side. Generative AI builds its answers from earned media, journalism, third-party credibility, the kind of coverage that takes real strategy, real relationships, and real consistency to earn. This is extraordinary good news.

[00:11:43]

Jason

If you're willing to invest properly. And if you have a colleague, a fellow chief marketing officer, a CEO, a VP of marketing who's still treating PR as a nice to have, or who's pouring investment into paid channels and wondering why they're invisible on AI, share this episode with them.

[00:12:02]

Jason

Because the brands that figure this out first are going to own the narrative inside the AI tools. Their buyers are already using every day.

[00:12:12]

Jason

Coming up in a future episode, we're going to go deeper on the Gartner research because beyond the PR and AI visibility story, there's four more predictions for communication and marketing leaders that have real implications for how marketing and comms teams are built, measured, and funded through 2029. I'll give you the highlights you actually need to know and what they mean for you to lead.

[00:12:39]

Jason

Stay tuned for that episode. Hey, I want to say thanks for being here. If this was valuable, share it. And I'll see you next time as we continue to help you stay on top of PR. This has been Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. I hope something great happens to you today. Thank you for listening, and be sure to leave us a review at ratethispodcast.com slash on top of PR.