The integration of generative AI into search engines has quietly ushered in a seismic shift for newsrooms, and that disruption is now forcing brands and PR professionals to rethink how earned media works.
As Google rolls out AI Overviews and AI Mode, users increasingly get their news in chatbot-style summaries. The result is fewer clicks to publisher sites, fewer pageviews, and an existential threat to traditional journalism.
Think like a digital architect
For decades, brands relied on earned media coverage, including articles, features, and interviews, to shape narratives, build credibility, and drive traffic to owned platforms. Historically, PR success meant landing placements in top-tier outlets and then amplifying those through social, digital, and influencer channels. As news coverage becomes increasingly compressed into AI summaries, our approach to media relations and PR must adapt.
At its core, this shift forces us to think like digital architects. If news is being consumed directly via AI summaries, we must optimize our content so that our brands appear in those summaries. That means anticipating the questions consumers will ask and ensuring that brand messaging is clear, distinct, and structured to be recognized and cited by AI systems. Traditional press releases need metadata, clarity, and context.
Building relationships with reputable journalists and publishers remains vital, but we must now also extend that to technologists who manage SEO strategies, schema markup, and AI attribution. PR pros must collaborate with digital marketing teams to embed structured data, standardize messaging, and tag content for discoverability. This cross-functional cooperation is no longer optional. It defines whether earned mentions translate into real-world visibility. Visible citations in AI come from high-quality earned media and structured content.
New metrics for an AI-first world
At the same time, brands need to rethink their measurement approach. Referral traffic is less reliable. Impressions are still valuable, but not sufficient. Instead, marketers must track how content surfaces inside AI answers. Just as Adobe launched tools for brands to monitor visibility in AI-powered browsers, PR teams must seek insight into which brand messages are getting cited, misquoted, or flatly ignored. Only then can strategies be adjusted in real time.
One of the most significant implications is the growing need for generative engine optimization, or GEO. Unlike traditional SEO, which is centered on blue link rankings, GEO is about influencing conversational AI. By anticipating user queries and narrative arcs, crafting concise and thorough answers, and ensuring multiple credible sources link back, brands can improve their chances of appearing in AI Overviews.
For PR, this is an opportunity to blend thought leadership with tactical content design. Rather than pitching reporters in general, PR teams should help executives craft evergreen insights designed to surface anywhere someone asks, “What is the healthiest food for aging dogs?” or “How can a brand create inclusive packaging?” Expert insights tied to brand themes now live in an AI knowledge graph, visible to consumers even before they visit a website. This puts earned media front and center if it can make it into that graph.
Reputation, crisis and rapid response in the AI era
Generative AI search also demands more active reputation management. Chatbots occasionally summarize inaccurately or with bias, and they lack the nuance of full articles. Brands must monitor not just posts and social mentions, but also how their topics appear within AI answer streams, and be prepared to correct or clarify them quickly, using rapid-response PR tactics. This means elevating earned media strategy into earned media optimization, actively shaping how brands are cited and represented by AI networks.
Crisis communications will also morph. In a world where AI systems may misstate a controversy before a consumer has clicked a single link, PR teams must anticipate AI-induced inaccuracies and have defensible, rapid-response assets ready. That means press releases must provide context, address potential misinterpretations head-on, and be supported by authoritative third-party validation.
The future of PR in an AI-driven world
This era is not just a challenge. It is the next frontier. Brands that double down on visibility in AI, partnering across PR, SEO, content, and digital channels, will maintain influence. Those that continue to optimize only for clicks, backlinks, or ranking may find their earned media efforts becoming invisible to consumers seeking quick answers.
Our call today is clear: PR must evolve from media gatekeeper to algorithmic knowledge architect. Storytelling cannot be organic alone. It must be engineered for AI citation. Pitching journalists remains fundamental, but now it must be accompanied by SEO collaboration, a metadata strategy, and content designed to answer user questions instinctively.
Brands and agencies must invest in technology and talent to monitor AI citations, debias content, and rapidly adapt. Partnerships between PR, communications, SEO, digital, and content teams should be formalized and measured. Teams must optimize earned media not just for attention but also for citation.
The shift from blue links to AI responses reflects a broader transformation in how consumers research products, behavior, and worldview. Marketing, and especially PR, is at a crossroads. We can either double down on earned campaigns defined by campaign cycles or adopt the principles of generative engine optimization, ensuring brand stories are central to the next wave of discovery.
Generative AI will neither replace storytelling nor diminish the power of nuance. But it will rewrite the rules of ownership and authority in news and information. Brands that proactively adapt and embed their voices into the AI ecosystem will emerge as leaders in this new narrative age. Because if brands cannot be found and quoted in AI, they will not matter in conversation, in the press, in customer choice, or community trust.
It is time to rethink PR with intelligence, structure and readiness for this generative future.
Matthew Caiola is the North America CEO of 5WPR and the leader of its corporate, technology and digital divisions. Under his leadership, 5WPR has been named one of Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces, a Top 50 Global PR Agency by PRovoke Media, a top three NYC PR agency by O’Dwyers, and has been awarded multiple American Business Awards.
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