In the AI Era, Earned Media Wins the Race
Long gone are the days when a PR agency would place a story for a B2B client in The New York Times and then just wait for the phone to ring. Since the dawn of the internet era, digital marketing and SEO strategies evolved to prioritize tools such as backlinks, keywords, meta data and wire distributions – all in the hopes of being recognized by a search engine that would spit out links to content that may imply an answer to the question being asked by the user.
Now, those searches are being surpassed by AI prompts on platforms such as ChatGPT, Gronk, Claude, or Gemini – which simply provide the answer to the question. It’s much more effective and, more often than not, generates an accurate answer.
Reach a Wider Audience with Targeted Public Relations
The ironic part of this new digital world, is that the strategies to get noticed are more like those of the pre-internet era than the more recent coding-focused SEO ones. Because the AI platforms rely on high-value media placements to form their responses (as opposed to, say, owned media blogs, paid media ads, or indexed “coverage” secured by a wire distribution), earned media has moved back into the pole position in a strategy known as generative engine optimization (GEO). In short: PR is the new SEO.
How does GEO work?
For B2B brands, especially those in niche technology markets, GEO performance increasingly determines whether targeted audiences – such as potential SaaS customers, investors, regulators, or talent – see the brand at critical decision points during research and evaluation.
According to PR Newswire, nearly nine in 10 B2B buyers use AI during vendor evaluations. This shift places earned media — news coverage, analyst citations, thought leadership in respected outlets, and other editorial third-party references — at the core of modern visibility. If a brand is not seen by AI with authoritative third-party signals, it can effectively be invisible at the point of decision.
Think of earned media as the foundation of the knowledge graph that AI models use to understand a brand:
- Editorial coverage in reputable publications signals relevance and trust.
- Analyst reports and peer reviews offer expert validation that informs evaluation-stage queries.
- Third-party profiles and citations contribute to how AI categorizes a company within a market.
This emphasis on trusted external signals is distinct from traditional SEO. A corporate press release on your own site may help SEO; but a mention of your company in a respected industry article is far more likely to be cited by a generative model. Research indicates that 90-plus percent of AI visibility comes from editorial and earned sources, not paid or owned channels.
For B2B brands with complex offerings, those third-party references serve as contextual anchors that help AI understand what the brand does and why it matters, particularly when distinguishing between competitors.
That’s where PR comes in
Today’s AI landscape elevates earned media and third-party validation – both long-standing cornerstones of public relations – to new heights.
As a PR agency with more than two decades of success, we have seen many shifts in how people consume their B2B news and information, and this latest evolution into GEO makes what we do more relevant than ever.
By getting brands covered by high-level industry publications or broad-reaching mainstream media, we’ve always helped them meet their business objectives, whether it’s launching a new product, expanding into a new market or seeking investment capital. However, through GEO we’re connecting these dots more impactfully than ever and more directly than our counterparts in digital marketing and advertising.
A strong PR program does three things that directly influence how AI systems ingest and surface information:
- Creates authoritative, citable source material
Reporters produce structured, factual, and context-rich content — exactly the type of material generative engines use to construct answers. When a brand appears in a news article, expert quote, data point, or executive commentary, that content often enters the indexing pipelines that feed LLMs. Over time, these references accumulate into a recognizable authority footprint. - Expands the brand’s presence across diverse, reputable domains
AI models prioritize signals from high-domain-authority media outlets and industry publications. An agency that consistently lands coverage across tier-one, trade, and niche verticals increases the probability that their client is included when an AI system triangulates information. - Helps LLMs understand an industry
Generative engines go beyond the basic retrieval of fact and synthesize them to define categories, trends, and emerging themes. Effective PR places a brand within those narratives. Strategic messaging, thought-leadership commentary, and data-driven storylines help position your organization as an exemplar the models can reference when users query a topic.
A PR agency operating with GEO principles in mind does more than pitch stories. It engineers media opportunities that create structured, machine-friendly signals.
Brands that treat PR as a GEO lever — rather than a separate communications channel — will capture an outsized share of voice in generative search environments and reach the right audience at their most likely point of decision.
It’s as powerful a tool that’s ever existed in the world of communication, especially for businesses that are trying to reach other businesses.
Interested in finding out more? We can help. Contact us for a discovery session and learn how PR can help your business reach its objectives.
Should this be: For a complementary discovery session on how this strategy can help your company, visit www.hoytorg.com or email Andrew King: aking@hoytorg.com.
