Earned Media Is Becoming the New Currency of A.I.-Driven Discovery

Earned media has never been more valuable for generating brand awareness. Much like the rise of search engines in the mid-2000s, generative A.I. is fundamentally changing how people discover information. As with search engine optimization (SEO), generative engine optimization (GEO) calls for a shift in brands’ visibility strategies, and in today’s no-click search environment, earned media dominates the results. 

The ubiquity of A.I.-driven search is clear. Since the rollout of A.I. Overviews—the A.I.-generated summaries that now appear at the top of most Google search results—Google searches increased nearly 50 percent, while website clicks dropped 30 percent overall. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently disclosed that ChatGPT reaches more than 800 million weekly active users.  

Answers from generative search are overwhelmingly pulled from credible national and industry publications, rather than company-owned web pages. Research indicates that 89 percent of links cited by A.I. originate from earned media sources. In this new landscape, visibility hinges less on what brands publish and far more on what trusted third parties say about them. To position brands for prominence in A.I.-generated answers, communication professionals can start by embracing the following fundamentals. 

Shift from an SEO to a GEO mindset

Traditional SEO works by optimizing keywords, backlinks and metadata to raise a brand’s website to the top of search pages. In the past, incorporating search phrases into content was often enough to secure above-the-fold visibility. 

That model no longer holds on its own. With the introduction of Google’s A.I. Overview, even well-optimized content may now sit a third of the way down the page. While SEO still contributes to brand authority and influences A.I. citations, owned content is no longer the prime driver of whether a brand appears in generative results.  

Instead, how a brand appears across the broader digital ecosystem matters far more in an A.I.-generated search environment. A.I. engines pull from third-party sources including community forums, social media posts, expert commentary and news coverage. The volume, narrative consistency, recency and quality of these references determine what brands are credible and worth citing.  

Unlike SEO, which provides levers brands can largely control, GEO partially depends on information outside of an organization’s direct influence. This makes making mentions and commentary in news outlets, especially those that reinforce a brand’s narrative, a strategic necessity. High-quality coverage that reinforces a brand’s narrative and appears in reputable sources helps signal credibility to A.I. engines. 

Simply appearing in a conversation about an idea is no longer good enough. If an organization wants to “own” a concept, the messages must be accurate, easy to understand and reinforced consistently across a wide spectrum of authoritative sources. This requires a shift from tailoring content to an algorithm searching for keywords (a legacy  SEO mindset) to crafting narratives with clear, direct answers to the questions their audiences are asking (a question-and-answer GEO mindset). A.I. engines pull from concise, well-explained summaries over keyword-dense pages when determining what information to elevate in results. 

Take a page out of the content marketer’s playbook

To increase visibility in generative search results, PR pros should use buyer questions to guide outreach and storytelling in the same way they inform content marketing. Understanding buyers’ needs and pain points can reveal what terms they will search for. The questions content marketers use to inform their content plans are the same as those that PR professionals must prioritize for their media strategies: What are the biggest challenges buyers are trying to solve? What steps can they take to fix their most pressing issues? How can we help them? 

Successful content marketers maintain consistent messaging across assets. The same discipline is necessary for successful GEO. Regardless of the news story, organizational spokespeople must sing from the same songbook when quoted by reporters. A cohesive narrative repeated frequently across diverse sources builds authority. Over time, A.I. systems learn to associate companies with certain ideas and surface the brand when users ask related questions.

Pick a narrative and commit  

Organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry’s viral concept of “job hugging” is a recent example of an initiative with narrative consistency that yielded strong GEO results. The company’s editorial team identified a subtle but significant behavioral trend: People were clinging to jobs even when they wanted to move on in their career journeys. The concept’s resonance was instant and organic, prompting coverage from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNBC, along with key trade publications like HR Brew and HR Dive. Both categories of outlets are frequently cited in generative searches when users ask about sector-specific insights. 

Now, when the term “job hugging” is searched, Korn Ferry’s website and the articles quoting its executives appear in both Google’s A.I. Overview and the organic search results below it. The recency of this coverage also plays a role in its visibility, as A.I. engines prioritize content written in the past twelve months, especially for queries related to advice or recent updates. This bias reinforces the need for a steady drumbeat of relevant media coverage that articulates a concept with consistent language and tone. Even a highly coveted front-page placement will have less impact on GEO visibility than a higher volume of niche and timely coverage.  

Double down on earned media in the era of A.I.

Given the intersection of GEO and earned media, the value of PR has increased exponentially. Even a modest investment in media relations can go further than it did a year ago, which may be the strongest case for investing in PR since the early internet era. Marketing executives might consider shifting some paid-search dollars over to media relations.  

Earned media has historically been hard to measure because its influence is indirect, dispersed across channels and rarely captured by traditional digital attribution models, which are built for paid media. PR drives awareness and credibility that matter to business outcomes, but don’t easily translate into trackable conversions. Today, testing category-level queries like, “How leading PR companies approach innovation” directly in A.I. engines can help a brand understand whether its thought leadership and earned media are influencing high-level narratives about PR industry innovation. As GEO improves, the organization should appear more frequently in the results. 

Determining exactly how many people are exposed to a brand through A.I. overviews is much harder in a no-click environment. That’s why platforms like Semrush, Muckrack and Similarweb have launched A.I. visibility tools to pull the curtain back as far as search engines will allow. Exact measurements will likely have to wait until more advanced models are introduced.

In the meantime, the relationship between GEO and earned media continues to evolve, shifting how information flows and trust is established. Brands that once dominated search results with strong SEO could fall below the fold unless they prioritize a GEO strategy.  

Sustaining visibility in the A.I. era calls everything into question, from how marketing budgets are distributed to narrative development to target media lists. The brands that treat generative visibility as a measurable asset rather than a byproduct will develop a meaningful competitive edge. May the best PR win.

Alana Gold is Group Vice President at The Bliss Group, a 50-year-old marketing communications agency.