A Pew Research study published in March 2026 found “50% of Americans are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life.” Another 38% are equally excited and concerned. Just 10% are more excited than concerned.

Another survey by NBC News found “a majority of registered voters, 57%, said they believe the risks of AI outweigh its benefits.” Just 34% said the opposite.

A third survey, this time by Quinnipiac, found 62% of Americans are either “not so excited” or “not excited at all.” In contrast, 35% of Americans are “very excited” (6%) or “somewhat excited” (29%) about AI.

These are credible surveys. It’s clear that public sentiment is turning on artificial intelligence (AI). Those numbers will grow without active engagement. That will weigh on every aspect of AI, from building data centers to selling customers on the value, to convincing workers to actually use this stuff productivity.

Some might say AI companies have lost control of the public narrative; I assess it’s a narrative of their own creation. Why? Executives at these companies have been telling the public AI is going to take their jobs and that’s not a feature people get excited about.

The AI-will-take-your-job narrative was established years ago

This isn’t a result of a misstep or public gaffe. It’s been the primary message AI companies have focused on saying for years.

Sam Altman, who allegedly co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit for the good of humanity but later changed his mind, said in 2019, “entire classes of jobs will go away and not come back.” He has since backpedaled by saying his prediction probably isn’t going to happen.

Yet that neural pathway in the collective consciousness has been paved for six years. It’s going to be really hard to change minds. You might be able to amend an answer in a court of law, as Altman did in recent testimony in response to a question about his truthfulness by a hostile lawyer, but the court of public opinion is rarely so permissive.

Add to it the fact that other AI executives continue to repeat the notion that AI is going to take everyone’s job over and over and over. Be careful what you tell people because they just might believe you.

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Issue after issue piles on that narrative

The technology community has reinforced this notion with tens of thousands of layoffs they attribute to AI. Some pundits say these layoffs are just a convenient excuse for poor business decisions and overstaffing. Either way, a public that generally reacts to headlines isn’t going to deliberate such nuance.

A laundry list of public concerns has followed: trust in the integrity of AI answers, privacy and surveillance issues, energy consumption driving up costs, water consumption to cool data centers, and, I’d contend, a constant drumbeat of hype that’s manifesting as “AI fatigue.”

Some of the AI projects put in place have failed. For example, AI was going to replace customer service, yet one study found 74% of enterprises have rolled back these initiatives because they aren’t working.

Even the Pope has weighed in with moral concerns. About one in five Americans is Catholic. That rural town where AI companies would like to put their next data center? There’s a good chance their only regional hospital is run by a Catholic charity. About 70% of citizens of that faith voted in the last Presidential election.

Skynet is an economic hitman

Alex Kantrowitz summarized some of the problems for a piece in CMSwire: AI has a public relations emergency – and it’s getting worse. He produced the nearby chart, which does a nice job of segmenting a partial list of AI issues by audience.

In his piece, he cites Marc Andreessen’s discharge of many of these issues in his recent podcast interview with Joe Rogan. I listened to that podcast, too. Andreessen is a genius and I want to understand his perspective but was surprised by his dismissiveness.

Energy costs? No problem. Data centers will bring mini-nuke plants. That sounds good. I think nuclear power is the way to go, too. Even as an advocate with a major nuclear facility about an hour away from my residence today, I’m not sure I’d want a miniature one in my backyard. Would he?

Water usage? Not true, he said. The Brookings Institution, which leans left, has a different view:

“A typical data center uses 300,000 gallons of water each day (equivalent to the demands of about 1,000 households), but large data centers can use an estimated 5 million gallons of water each day, equivalent to the needs of a town of up to 50,000 residents.”

Maybe the former Netscape co-founder is right. Maybe Brookings is right. In either case, the number of news stories about water rights battles – outside of cooling AI data centers – has grown in recent years. So, it’s an issue that comes with existing baggage. It’s already a hot-button issue.

Moreover, AI advocates are going to have to make that case, in this context, to a public that has already made up its mind about the benefits and drawbacks of AI. And he and others seem to think those objections can just be easily brushed aside; NIMBY is a formidable opponent.

The fact remains, from a public perception perspective, these AI companies are asking Americans to adjust to higher energy and water costs for tech innovation they’ve been told will take their job. That message is infinitely easier to understand and far more likely to land. It has landed.

Brush concerns aside at your own peril. That’s what people think: the real-life version of Skynet isn’t coming with guns blazing; it’s an economic hitman.

(click image for higher resolution) 

Pragmatic messaging changes

Technology providers have long shifted between two primary messages dictated by economic conditions. When times are good, the benefits espoused center on revenue growth and market share. When economic times are weak, the focus shifts to cost-savings and efficiency.

Much of the messaging AI companies have broadcast has been focused on the latter with the intention of soliciting investors and securing early corporate customers. It’s clearly done well to achieve that goal, but it’s created second- and third-order effects they have to deal with now.

“Now” is a strange time – a seemingly perpetual state of uncertainty for years. Uncertainty seems to call for a message that focuses on cost-cutting. If businesses were the only stakeholders, that would be the logical choice, but they aren’t and the messaging needs to reflect that.

Reinvest the time saved by AI

Some might say, but what if it’s true? AI really is going to take jobs, and we shouldn’t dance around that fact.

For sure, change is coming. Some jobs will go away. But it’s more akin to arbitrage than dissolution. Every technological innovation since the Industrial Revolution has ended some jobs and created many more new ones. The evidence suggests that’s going to be the case with AI.

Case in point? Software developers’ jobs, which were one of the prime functions AI would allegedly eliminate, have surged this year:

“Data from TrueUp, a tech hiring analytics firm, shows more than 67,000 software engineering job openings, the highest level in over three years. Listings have roughly doubled since a trough in mid-2023.”

The previous messaging has been unduly alarmist, and it needs to shift to pragmatism. Put the cup of Kool-Aid down and slowly back away. The focus has to shift to productivity, value creation and the new jobs AI is going to create.

During a recent keynote presentation by Jay Baer, which I had the chance to watch, he said AI could save customer service agents 25% of their time; rather than seeing that as a chance to cut staff and save money, that time should be reinvested in the customer.

At the moment, that’s a competitive opportunity that completely flips the message. Such a message stands out because it’s different, not because it’s shouted louder.

Imagine the realized gains in loyalty and customer marketing potential if those customer-facing AI projects had been rolled out this way instead. Good customer service is great marketing.

It turns out that AI does have a finite runway

The mess AI companies have made with their misguided messaging couldn’t be unfolding at a more inconvenient time. Corporate America is rationing AI usage over spiking costs and questionable ROI. Investors are going to follow suit.

It’s an incredibly expensive market to compete in and much of the market traction has been made on investment dollars rather than retained earnings. Maybe some of these companies can hold out by following the Amazon strategy – delaying profitability for years in pursuit of market share – but it’s not going to be all of them.

We couldn’t see the end of the runway when this all started in November of 2022, but four years later, it’s becoming quite evident there is a finite amount of tarmac. I’m not saying it’s a bubble, but the parallels to dot-com, as many have observed, are strikingly similar.

While every new technology that brings change will have detractors, this particular problem, I assess, is one of the AI companies’ own creation.

The fix starts with a listening tour, not a messaging exercise

I think it’s fixable, but it’s going to take more than words. And patience. And time.

The instinct from AI companies is to counter with facts and stats championing the benefits. They need to resist that urge; it will only feed resistance because it contradicts what these same companies have been saying, repeatedly, over a long period of time. Small-town American resistance works like lighter fluid to a media flame; everyone loves to root for the underdog.

My PR instincts would be to tap into the wave of populism, especially in rural America, which is foreign to the leanings of Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue. Like the space race, it’s exceedingly important that the U.S. win the AI race. But you can’t run on instincts; it has to be researched, refined and, most importantly, pressure-tested. This isn’t a marketing effort or a PR initiative; it’s a grass-roots political campaign.

The starting point isn’t a messaging exercise; it’s a listening tour. AI leaders need to talk to ordinary people in rural America where they want to build their data centers. They must be willing to listen and be receptive to criticisms that they are unaccustomed to hearing.

And they need to do it with grace and humility and action.

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The central benefit of public relations (PR) comes from the credibility of a message shared through a third-party. As I’ve long quipped, nothing you say about yourself has the credibility of someone else saying it about you. Why? Because at the most basic level, a third-party has less incentive to say nice things unless they are actually warranted,

Many of my peers will argue that third-party validation is limited to specific PR duties, like media relations or analyst relations, where the effort produces favorable mentions in news or market research reports. PR is a bigger category than just media relations.

I agree with the latter but have a different perspective on the former. I believe community relations, investor relations, social media and content marketing, which may be better described as “brand journalism,” all rely on third-party validation.

When PR efforts facilitate community interaction – that’s word-of-mouth – arguably the most valuable form of third-party validations. Ditto for investor relations or the content that gets shared, or better still cited with links, mentions and search results. Those are all signals of third-party validation, both for humans and the algorithms that decide what content to show you are factoring. People might say retweets are not endorsements, but such disclaimers can’t override Kahneman’s System 1.

So, in my mind, third-party validation is what sets PR apart from any other marketing or communications activity. It’s essential to the definition. It’s also what makes measurement so vexing: linking the influence of a third-party output to a behavior change is hard, because it’s virtually impossible to isolate that influence from other factors. And, collectively, these things are what make PR so valuable; third-party validation, by definition, has to be earned and cannot be purchased.

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Do AI mentions offer third-party validation?

AI visibility is giving PR a moment. Many big industry thinkers predicted last December that generative AI would make PR a priority this year. That’s largely come true. Just like Google supplanted newspapers as the new front page, so too are LLMs becoming the new-new front page. Even Gartner, the technology analyst firm, chimed in on PR’s opportunity in the AI era.

Certainly, citations in AI searches are similar to mentions in media and analyst reports, which is becoming the de facto measurement practice. Yet there’s something else that’s happening that hints at a more profound behavior change: the AI audio interface is being used to win friendly arguments.

People have friendly arguments all the time. The old way of resolving a disagreement or establishing facts was a Google search. Today, it’s increasingly becoming the voice AI interface. For example, a disagreement over who was POTUS in 1982 is easily solved, with “Hey, Grok, who was President in 1982?”

The machine will read back the answer and it’s accepted as fact. That’s an amazing behavior change when you pause to think about what’s happening. One side of the argument knew the answer, but no matter how deft an orator – the other side wouldn’t accept it as fact from that source – but it would accept it if from AI.

Examples of third-party validation don’t get clearer than that one; there are a gazillion conversations like that happening every day. I find it to be simultaneously an unnerving idea and a business opportunity. Similarly, the capabilities of AI are way overhyped, but at the same time, it’s also having a gradual, yet profound, influence on human behavior.

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This is an age-old question in media relations: Should you take an interview with a publication that has a small audience?

While there could be valid strategic reasons for declining, my answer is usually a resounding “yes,” for most companies.

Sarah Evans recently dusted the question off for the AI visibility era in a LinkedIn post. The post suggests you should take an interview if AI searches pull content from those outlets.

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More specifically, she recommends accepting an interview if any two of the four following conditions apply:

• The outlet’s audience is related to your target market;
• The outlet is cited by an LLM;
• The outlet produces a transcript; and
• The interview request is recent.

She goes on, in the post, to show why one little interview can have second- and third-order effects for visibility.

The first condition – if the outlet is related to your target market – is enough for me. I’d offer several reasons why.

1. A mention in a small publication is still social proof

Media relations is harder than they’ve ever been. There are fewer reporters inundated with pitches. You’ve got to get started somewhere, or if you’re started, keep the momentum going. A placement in a small audience publication suggests your ideas are worth covering.

This applies beyond traditional media, too. The same consideration should be given to podcasts, blogs and other sites managed by independent reporters, influencers and content creators.

That can lead to additional coverage, and I encourage organizations to actively build on those successes and amplify earned coverage: what you do with a media mention after earning it counts for as much as getting it in the first place.

2. Relationships – reporters at small pubs move on to big pubs

Too many in PR overplay the strength of relationships they have with reporters – but this is a genuine opportunity. Reporters who work for small publications, especially those just starting in their careers, tend to go on to work for larger publications later.

This is a golden opportunity to foster a bona fide relationship.

3. Influence the influencers

If the outlet is in your target market, chances are other reporters and influencers interested in that same market read those smaller publications. It’s a chance to reach a segment of potential customers – and influence the influencers – to get on their radar.

4. Every interview is good practice

Media interviews don’t come along every day. It takes practice to get good at delivering messages and answering questions. Every interview is a chance to get practice in – but only if you take it seriously and prepare.

The number one task to do before an interview is to take a few minutes to clear your mind and focus on the topic of the interview. The modern office worker is jumping from meeting-to-meeting and from task-to-task, so it’s crucial to hit the pause button and collect your thoughts.

The risks of refusing a small audience interview

Sarah closes her post with the “cost” of refusal. Refusing an interview, regardless of size, is effectively like opting out of the potential for AI visibility: “The AI systems will remember when you said nothing.”

The bigger risk in my book is the human element: “The editors will remember when you said no.” And so too will the independent influencers and creators.

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The average B2B technology buyer required 62.4 touches, across an average of 3.5 different channels, to close a deal.

That’s according to benchmarking data analyzed by Dreamdata. The company provides marketing attribution software that analyzes marketing and sales data to provide view into the time and effort it takes to persuade a B2B buyer to purchase a given technology.

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It’s important to note this is not survey data, but behavioral data based on an analysis of 414 B2B companies using the Dreamdata platform.

I’ve previously summarized findings from five different reports on the same topic and these benchmarks seem to be comparable. You can find that piece here: How many touches or interactions does it take to attract and close B2B prospects?

1. First touch to conversion

It takes B2B organizations, on average, 34 days from the first touch to convert a potential buyer into a potential prospect.

2. First touch to sales opportunity

It takes B2B organizations, on average, 84 days from first touch to turn a prospect into a real sales opportunity.

3. First touch to deal-closed

It takes B2B organizations, on average, 192 days from first touch to close a deal.

4. Large organizations move more slowly

Large companies, defined as those with 250 or more employees, require an average of 242 days from first touch to deal-closed. Smaller companies, defined as those with 50 or fewer employees, require an average of 147 days. In other words, the marketing-to-sales progression moves about 61% more slowly in large organizations.

5. European companies move more slowly than U.S.

A similar effect can be seen when looking at the data by geography. European companies take an average of 199 days from first touch to deal-closed – compared to an average of 177 days for U.S.-based companies.

6. Marketing-to-sales progression by channel

The report also offers a look at this cycle based on the channel that first touched a potential buyer.

• First touch: review sites. Buyers who first engaged with information about a solution provider on a review site went from converting to a prospect, to deal-closed, on average in 70 days.

• First touch: paid media. Buyers who first engaged with information about a solution provider from paid media, when from converting to a prospect, to deal-closed, on average in 87 days.

• First touch: social media. Buyers who first engaged with information about a solution provider from social media, when from converting to a prospect, to deal-closed, on average in 222 days.

This is a correlation, and correlation may not be causation. For example, buyers looking for solutions on a review site are likely well into their research phase, so while the average cycle time seems lower, chances are the solution provider was unaware of until the inquiry came in from a review site.

7. Size of the buying committee

B2B organizations have committees that review potential technologies for procurement, and the average buying committee has 6.3 people on it.

About the Dreamdata report

At just eight pages long, full report is a quick read and contains several other useful benchmarks. It’s available for download here: 10 B2B benchmarks you must know.

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Marketing faces a lot of pressure to demonstrate results. Accordingly, the benefit of gating content is the production of a signal to measure.

As a result, marketing philosophies about gated content often split into two camps: gate everything or gate nothing.

I’m of the mind that it’s about balance. Gated content has a place under the umbrella of a larger content strategy. That’s where the annual Netline study of gated content is most useful.

Netline makes a marketing platform that, in part, enables marketers to measure content downloads. Once a year, they aggregate and anonymize the data to produce a trend report.

The 2026 report I’m covering here is based on a data analysis of content downloads made in 2025. It’s worth pointing out that this is behavioral data, as it’s based on actions content consumers took rather than their opinion in response to a survey.

Below are a few findings that stood out to me.

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1. Registrations for gated content slides lower

Fewer people registered for gated content in 2025. The volume of downloads was down 8.6% from 7.9 million in 2024, to 7.2 million in 2025.

Commentary: While marketing benefits from obtaining contact information from gated content, it also adds friction that reduces reach. There’s a sense that gating content ensures only those who are truly interested will register for it, but it’s worth challenging that assumption.

Distrust is a default mode, and businesses have a history of taking unwanted liberties with contact information. As a result, people are loath to provide it.

Two rules of thumb can help drive the decision to gate content. First, the content should be unique. If the information is available elsewhere, there’s little incentive to register for it.

Second, the purpose of the piece should drive whether or not to gate it. Content aimed at building awareness can’t do its job behind a registration gate. Content aimed at conversion might suggest the content consumer has a genuine interest.

2. Download now; consume a week later

People who download content don’t read it for about a week later. The time between download and consumption grew from 38.5 hours in 2024 to 47.7 hours in 2025. That works out to 5.96 days, or about a week later.

The type of content matters. As the chart nearby depicts, playbooks are read an average of 20.6 hours later; trend reports are read 22 hours later, and case studies are read 28.7 hours later.

Commentary: This should inform your BDR/SDR follow-up strategy. The classic play is to have them call anyone who downloads gated content 24 hours later to see if they are interested in buying their product.

Most people just wanted to see the content; buying a software product is probably 10 steps away. It’s like going from ‘hello to a marriage proposal’ in a download.

Give those who download content a chance to read it first. When you follow up, consider the next logical step. That’s the whole point of researching and visualizing a buyer’s journey – to map content needs with the prospect’s stage.

(click image for higher resolution)

3. One-fifth of downloads are for content about AI

Content about AI accounted for 21.1% of all downloads in the report. This is similar to the same findings last year, when this category of content spiked.

Commentary: Marketing should keep an ear out for AI fatigue. The internet has been on an AI content streak since November 2022. Much of it has been overhyped.

There’s also a notable twist in the public narrative. Some of the biggest names in AI have been preaching that AI is going to take everyone’s job. Of course, nobody wants to lose their job, and that’s having an impact on sales and adoption. Gen Z is allegedly resisting AI.

Smart marketers will ensure messaging around AI tools focuses on how AI will augment their abilities, not replace them. The track record so far suggests this is what’s actually happening as well, so such a claim is more factual, from my view of the landscape.

4. Ebooks once again the most downloaded format

Ebooks accounted for about half of all content downloads on the Netline platform in 2025. This was true in 2024 and in 2023 as well.

Here’s the breakdown of the most downloaded content formats:

• ebook 48.8%
• cheat sheet 9.3%
• guide 7.5%
• white paper 4.8%
• report 3.7%
• article 3.5%
• tips and tricks guide 2.4%
• on-demand webinar 1.7%
• webinar 1.4%
• playbook 1.4%

Commentary: I’ve got to wonder if ebooks are the most downloaded asset because that’s the asset marketers are most comfortable making. As the old saying goes, when everyone zigs, that’s your chance to zag. Be sure to experiment with alternate formats.

One other crucial point here is content repurposing. A good webinar can be parlayed into ebooks, articles, guides and infographics. In other words, it’s not about which format is better, but how to use them together.

I also encourage marketing teams to treat this as an ongoing program, rather than a campaign that starts and ends. One approach relies on iteration and keeps going, while the other is a full start and stop.

5. On-demand webinars top live

Overall webinar downloads grew 5.3% according to the report. However, registrations for live webinars dropped notably (-22.9%) while on-demand webinars grew substantially (54.3%).

Commentary: This finding is consistent with the overall conclusion – people download now and consume later. That’s an important factor that should drive content strategy.

It’s unlikely your customers and prospects are sitting at a desk reading your ebook. Instead, they’ve saved it for later and are reading it at home, on the subway, or while waiting to pick the kids up from practice.

The promise of gated content

The promise of gated content is useful information in exchange for contact information. B2B marketing has to ensure its content meets those expectations, or risk turning “read you later” into read you never.

For those interested in reading more on this study later, Netline summarized the findings and has a link to download the report here.

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Study finds AI-generated content performs poorly in search

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One challenge for PR in pitching stories to the media is the lack of response. At times, it can feel like pitching into the void.

Sometimes, you send what you think is a well-researched, relevant and timely pitch – and nothing happens. Other times, you can whip up a short order pitch on a whim and it winds up driving solid coverage.

To be sure, even for seasoned pros, the former happens more often than the latter, data shows. While the volume of pitches can vary by their beat or industry, most reporters are short on time and under pressure of a deadline.

There are more PR pros pitching, or SEOs and digital marketers moonlighting as PR pros, than reporters in a news seat. They simply can’t respond to every pitch, even if they think it’s a good one. That’s just the nature of media relations.

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PR isn’t completely blind either

We aren’t completely blind to what’s going on here. There are a number of surveys that poll reporters and ask them about their pitching preferences.

Many of these, but not all, are conducted by PR software providers that maintain a database of reporters as part of their product. Regular readers know I like to pour over the surveys of journalists and highlight interesting findings.

In this post, I’ve gone back through the reports I’ve covered – and checked out a few more – to aggregate PR pitching statistics.

About half of reporters never respond to PR pitches

Here’s what the data shows about reporter response rates:

2026 Muck Rack survey of ~900 reporters:

• • 54% of journalists say they seldom or never respond to PR pitches;
  • 25% respond about half the time;
  • 15% usually respond; and
  • Just 6% always respond.

The 2026 survey findings were more or less consistent with the same survey conducted two years prior.

2024 Muck Rack survey of ~1,100 reporters:

• • 49% seldom or never respond;
  • 24% respond about “half the time”; and
  • 26% respond to PR pitches always or usually.

A 2024 study by Propel substantiates these surveys somewhat. Importantly, the Propel data is not survey data, but behavioral data. In the first quarter of 2024, the company analyzed 400,000 pitches sent to 4,000 reporters through the Propel platform.

2024 Propel study of 400,000 pitches:

• • Reporters open about half (46%) of the story pitches they receive; and
  • Reporters respond to 3.43% of the story pitches they receive.

The risks of following up on PR pitches

To put the Propel data in context, a 3% response rate means you’ll hear back from a reporter on three out of every 100 pitches. That leaves PR wondering about questions such as:

• Did the pitch land in the inbox?
• Did they see the pitch?
• Did they understand the pitch?
• Did they think the pitch was relevant?
• Why or why not?

Such questions lead to the next logical progression: should PR follow up on pitches?

Yes, generally you should consider following up, but carefully. It’s a delicate balance between making sure they saw the news you are pitching – and annoying a reporter.

Annoyance carries risks that can lead to permanent damage:

• A 2024 survey of 3,000 journalists by Cision found 48% of journalists will block a PR person for repeated aggressive follow-ups.

• A 2019 survey of 500 writers, editors, and publishers, by the marketing agency Fractl, found “53% have blacklisted at least one person this month due to bad pitches. 30% have blacklisted three or more.”

Should media relations follow up on PR pitches?

As I “grew up” in PR, I was very loath to follow up with reporters. The legends of getting blocked was always on my mind.

Further, I tend to be a machine when it comes to managing email (pro tip: turn off email previews; this feature destroys your productivity), and I suspect reporters are, too. They are dependent on email to do their job.

My original approach was to, sparingly, write a new pitch with a fresh angle. Yet over time, I changed my mind about this based on survey data:

• 2026 Muck Rack survey findings. The 2026 survey cited above found that 50% of reporters say one follow-up is ideal; 51% say follow-ups should happen between a few days after the initial pitch and up to a week later.

• 2025 Cison survey (N = 3,000). A 2025 survey had slightly different findings. Overall, the global survey found 62% of reporters say just one follow-up is appropriate. When just looking at U.S.-based reporters, the number goes up slightly: 69% said one follow-up is okay, 6% are good with several follow-ups and 24% said never follow up.

• 2024 Cision survey. The 2024 version of Cision’s survey was in the same ballpark: 64% of reporters said it’s fine to follow-up once; 8% said it’s okay to follow-up multiple times and 27% said PR should never follow up.

What’s interesting is that if we go back through these reports, we can see a real shift right about the time the pandemic hit.

For example, Muck Rack’s survey findings every year have been similar – until we hit 2019. That version polled ~700 reporters and we can see a real shift of about 25%.

• In 2019, “73% of journalists are OK with receiving a follow-up to a pitch they didn’t initially respond to. Only 12% would prefer not to receive any type of follow-up.”

In other words, reporters were more open to follow-ups prior to the pandemic than they are today. I would venture that we will likely see a continued downward trend in this respect as AI-generated content enables lazy PR people to fling sloppy pitches around the web.

How do I handle follow-ups?

Generally, I’ll do one short follow-up 2-3 days later for reporters who haven’t responded. I always strive to connect what I’m pitching with what they’ve covered historically.

Anything beyond that, and I usually write an entirely new pitch, or wait until the next time I have something I think will be of interest to them.

I have also long since borrowed a play from email marketing and use analytics to track opens and clicks. That data informs me if, when and how best to follow up.

There is a caveat: email open and click-through rates are not always accurate. Privacy settings by device, preference and even on an enterprise scale can impact the readings. So, consider the analytics a guideline and not a fact.

Well, that doesn’t sound too promising, so what should PR do? As I wrote for the lead story in a September 2016 edition of Communication World by IABC, PR and content marketing need each other.  It’s worth your while to “report” on your industry through your own unique view of the world. If you do that for readers, they will reward you with an audience.

In other words, content marketing makes media relations better and media relations make content marketing better. It’s been headed in this direction for a long time.

Those who know, know what it can do. Those that don’t will continue to see blogs and content as secondary, if not quaint, tools.

While I don’t think media relations will go away in the foreseeable future, it’s often not enough to simply pitch stories anymore: you have to prove a story has legs, and that’s what content marketing does for PR.

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This is how the sorry state of media relations ends

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Not too long ago, there was one reporter whose attention I was trying to get.

The company I was pitching hadn’t done much PR, but it was a buzzy and well-defined space with a  lot of innovation.

I had sent a few well-timed and customized pitches that fit squarely into his historical coverage. No response.

Next I had a new product announcement that was genuinely novel. Again, crickets.

I followed up a few days later with a new angle. Nothing.

After a follow-up or two, I began to wonder if the company had done something prior to my involvement to get blacklisted. I finally wrote to ask him directly, albeit diplomatically.

A day later, he wrote me back:

“Not at all. I simply don’t have time to reply to every email or pitch, much less cover everything. You’ve put [company name] on my radar — keep the news flowing.” Thanks!”

This is just the reality of the current media landscape. Reporters are busy. We live in an information rich environment.  It takes time, patience, resolve and consistency to break through.

That’s a good set up for this survey of journalists. If you’ve been sending quality pitches and getting no response, this survey gives you a window into their world.

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A window into the journalist’s world

PR software vendor Muck Rack recently polled 897 reporters in their database for its State of Journalism Report. A little more than 80% of the respondents are based in the U.S.; 58% are employed full-time by a publication; nearly half (46%) hold the title of “reporter,” while another 25% hold the title of “editor.”

The report provides some insight into the challenges of journalism:

• Never have enough time for reporting. Just 18% say they “always” have time to complete their work to their own standard. Another 15% say they “rarely” or “never” do.

• Journalists’ roles have expanded. About one-third of respondents (29%) say their roles have expanded “significantly,” and another 33% said “somewhat.”

• Meaningful work for unmeaningful pay. 65% describe their work as a journalist as “meaningful,” more than half (56%) say their employment is stable, and 75% report their compensation as landing between $40k-$100k annually.

Those three findings provide a high-level perspective of what it’s like to walk a mile in the shoes of a reporter: They love their work but have more to do in less time, and are compensated relatively poorly.

That gives you a sense for their motivation, which you’ve got to bear in mind when pitching a story.

Journalists perspective on media relations

The report also contains about a dozen pages dedicated to media relations. The survey asked various questions about the pitches they received. These also provide insight into what goes on in their minds when reviewing those pitches.

Here are a few of the findings that stood out to me:

• Many reporters choose their stories. 40% of reporters say they choose their own story ideas and pitch those in editorial meetings. By contrast, just 3% say they only cover stories assigned to them by an editor. The rest fall in the middle, with 55% saying “it’s a mix of both.”

• Social media matters. Businesses that do media outreach ought to be active on social media. 65% of journalists surveyed said social media is at least moderately important for their work. The report does note that this has declined in the last few years.

• Most reporters do value PR relationships. About half of reporters (53%) say relationships with PR are “very important” (30%) or “important” (23%). Another 20% say they are “moderately important.”

• Most stories start with a PR pitch. Some 86% of reporters surveyed said some of their stories start with a PR pitch. Of those, 51% attribute between 1-10% of stories to PR. Another 17% put it at between 11-25%; 12% say it’s between 16-50% and, finally, 5% say more than 50% of their stories start with a PR pitch.

The report also provided figures on the volume of pitches received. I was surprised to see that just 14% of reporters say they receive more than 21 pitches a day.

I would imagine the volume of pitches is highly dependent on the beat. In B2B tech, I routinely hear from reporters that they easily get upwards of 100 pitches a day. It’s been that way for years. The trade reporter mentioned above certainly does.

One former Wall Street Journal reporter said she used to get emails at a rate of one per minute. Assuming a standard eight-hour day, the math works out to 480 emails per day. That would overwhelm anyone.

Another reporter I spoke with a couple of weeks ago has completely given up on email. His email address bounced, so I reached out to him on LinkedIn. He responded right away and explained he was getting too many irrelevant pitches, which rendered his email unusable.

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Why reporters delete PR pitches

Reporters rarely responded to pitches.

More than half (54%) said they rarely responded to pitches. Another 25% say they respond about half of the time. Lastly, about one in five “usually” (15%) or “always respond” (6%).

Why? Most pitches are not relevant.

Nearly nine in 10 reporters (88%) delete pitches because it’s irrelevant to their coverage. That’s not the only reason why they might disregard a pitch.

The survey asked: What causes you to immediately disregard or delete a PR pitch?

Here’s how the responses broke out:

• 88% said it’s irrelevant to my coverage;
• 71% said it’s overly promotional or advertorial;
• 50% said it looks like a mass email;
• 46% said it’s sent repeatedly without response;
• 40% said it’s too long or unclear;
• 35% said it’s addressed to the wrong name or outlet;
• 26% said it lacks any source access; and
• 3% cited other unspecified reasons.

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What makes a good PR pitch?

Relevance is the operative word in effective PR pitches. The survey asked respondents: What makes a pitch genuinely relevant to your audience, not just your beat?

• 78% said it directly affects the community my audience belongs to;
• 45% said it has a clear local or cultural context;
• 28% said it includes voices from the community impacted;
• 28% said it avoids generic or stereotypical framing;
• 20% said it reflects my audience’s lived experiences; and
• 3% cited other unspecified reasons.

How well do PR pitches adhere to these guidelines?

Not well. According to the report:

“Just 3% of journalists say PR outreach always reflects the community their outlet serves, and 13% say usually.”

Rules of thumb for PR pitching

Muck Rack has been running this same survey for eight years. Over time, reporters have been consistent about the tactical aspects of pitching.

• Use email. “62% of journalists prefer to be pitched via 1:1 email.”

• Most don’t care what day you pitch. “50% don’t care which day they are pitched, but of those that do, 18% prefer to be pitched on a Monday.”

• Pitch before noon. “78% want to receive pitches before noon.”

• Be succinct. “69% prefer pitches that are under 200 words.”

• Follow up, sparingly. “50% say one follow-up is ideal, and 51% say it should come within 3-7 days later.”

These are all just table-stakes – the constraints within which PR has room to be creative.

No response isn’t a “not interested”

That trade reporter in the opening of this post goes to show that no response isn’t the same thing as “not interested,” it’s more like a “not right now.”

If you take his words at face value, he didn’t cover the story I was pitching because he wasn’t interested. He didn’t cover it because the brand is unfamiliar and he’s busy. However, he’s aware of the company now, which improves their chances.  It’s a step in the right direction.

This is an important point: It’s unrealistic to expect to go from no coverage to lots of coverage without a few steps in between. This speaks to factors we don’t see often in surveys of journalists, nor in surveys of PR professionals: Patience, resolve and consistency matter a lot when trying to break through the noise.

It takes time to build familiarity and prove your relevance. You have to do all of the things mentioned above – and do it reliably over time.

Media relations is a game of momentum. Even for the best PR practitioners, there’s no magic button, but there are clear signs of progression.

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The top PR priorities, challenges and opportunities in 2026 [survey]

Image credits: Gemini and respective study

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“Marketing contracts under economic pressure despite growing value and AI gains.” That’s the title of the 35^th edition of The CMO Survey.

It’s a factual title based on the averages compiled from responses; however, it’s not uniform. Averages can be deceiving, so readers should avoid drawing generalized conclusions – and examine the pockets carefully.

This survey had 308 respondents, and has, historically, done well in obtaining input from senior marketing leaders. About two-thirds of respondents come from the B2B sector. That includes ~40% of respondents who work for B2B product companies and ~26% who work for B2B services companies.

The survey has been conducted since 2008, though the biannual cadence has been reduced to annual since 2025. That’s probably the right move since survey fatigue is a real problem.

It’s headed by Christine Moorman, a professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, with support from Deloitte and the American Marketing Association.

I’ve reviewed nearly every survey since its inception and have written about half of them – when something in the data stands out to me.  There’s a lot of interesting stuff in this year’s survey, so I’ve highlighted those points along with my own commentary below.

1. Marketing’s economic optimism sours a bit

“Economic optimism among marketers has declined to 56.8 (on a 0–100 scale), its lowest reading since the pandemic,” according to the report. “More than half of marketers (50.7%) report being less optimistic than last quarter – the highest level of pessimism since June 2020 – while those reporting greater optimism have fallen to 22.2%, down from 31.2% one year ago.”

Commentary: As noted in the commentary, this sentiment is not uniform. Real estate and energy verticals are far more optimistic, with scores around 69 – about 13 points above the average. Similarly, other sectors are lower. Mining and construction turned a bit gloomier with a score of 38.

I’ve observed similar ups and downs within the technology sector. For example, VC investment has trended towards more money in fewer deals. AI is hyped to a level that’s reminiscent of 1999, where every startup adds dot-AI to their name the same way companies added dot-com during the internet’s crazy growth stages.

Outside of this survey, economic data is all over the map. War, changing trade policy, inflation, AI and shifting government policies are obfuscating traditional forecasting methods.

Finally, optimism, or the lack of it, is infectious. Marketing, as the public face of a company and an influential internal organization, has to put on a brave face. That’s part of the job.

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2. It’s not tariffs, but the perennial changes to tariffs

This report pins a sizable portion of slipping optimism and more on tariffs:

“Tariffs are also suppressing business investment. Among companies changing investment levels, those lowering investments outnumber those making increases by almost four to one.”

It later quantifies this by showing that about 1 in 5 businesses (~22%) are trimming investment as a result of tariffs.

Commentary: It’s not the tariffs that are hurting business investment; it’s the constant changes to trade policy. The best business case for investment hinges on assumptions, which are inherently risky, even in the best of times.

The fact is, business investment, for most companies, is a multi-year obligation. They aren’t going to invest if trade policy changes from month to month.

Businesses dislike uncertainty more than taxes, which is the nature of tariffs. If the government sets the rules, without changing them every month, businesses will find a way to adapt. That’s what capitalism allows, which no other economic model can match.

3. Businesses have doubled down on customer marketing

The report traces policy uncertainty to shifts in marketing spend:

“In response to this uncertainty, almost half of marketers are pulling back their targeting strategies to focus on increasing the loyalty of their existing customers rather than pursuing new customers, especially new geographic markets. Growth spending is following a similar pattern with companies spending almost 60% of their budgets on market penetration strategies that focus on selling more of existing products and services to existing customers. This inward orientation is a consistent theme across the 2026 findings.”

This also shows up more clearly later in the survey, with findings around customer retention. Marketing leaders rate their company’s customer retention efforts higher than customer acquisition efforts. This is especially prominent in the B2B marketing sector as both B2B product and services outperformed the overall average.

Commentary: About this time two years ago, I covered two surveys that showed customer marketing was a neglected opportunity. Twenty-four months later, it feels like every company has fixed that – and then some.

For example, the volume of emails, calls and texts I get with cross-selling and upselling pitches is at a 12 on a scale of 1-10. Similarly, SaaS businesses have increasingly seen in-app messages as an untapped channel. QuickBooks, which is made by Intuit, barrages me with constant in-app messages.

It’s beyond obnoxious or inconvenient – it’s a sustained pattern of distracting interruptions on a daily and weekly basis. There’s little-to-no chance I’d reward that effort by buying more. On the contrary, I’m actively looking to find a replacement to rid myself of the noise.

That’s what marketing has to keep in mind, because while I’ve singled out an example, it’s pervasive in the tech sector; every company is doing it now. Nobody minds an occasional pitch, but don’t harass your customers. Your SaaS product is a strategic marketing channel when used sparingly; it’s a time-sucking irritation when businesses get overzealous.

4. AI needs a dose of reality

“AI use in marketing has nearly doubled in two years, rising from 13.1% of marketing activities in 2024 to 24.2% in 2026,” respondents said. “Generative AI has expanded even faster, growing 220%, from 7.0% to 22.4% over the same period. Companies project AI will account for 55.9% of marketing activities within three years.”

Commentary: We are at peak AI hype, or at least I hope we are. The most prominent voices stand to gain by making such claims. That conflict of interest is a healthy reason to be skeptical.

I read, study and use AI on a daily basis. I have conversations with clients that develop this stuff. It’s not AGI and it’s not even close. Absent some unforseen break through, there’s no way any of this will happen with an LLM.  These systems are not delivering an answer based on truth; they are predicting the answer based on probability.

To be clear, generative AI is extremely useful, but it hasn’t lived up to the hype and I suspect the hype will mirror cold fusion: ‘just around the corner’ for the last 50 years.

It’s a bubble, just like the dot-com era was a bubble. The internet proved to be an invaluable tool, but it took a couple of decades. Generative AI is going to be similar – and new jobs will undoubtedly emerge – which is what happens every time society embraces significant new technological innovation.

The top generative AI use case in this survey was content creation (74%). That’s a huge risk to couple with the ‘good enough’ attitude some businesses have adopted.

It’s not good enough. Not when three-fourths of marketing content is produced by AI and all sounds the same. Further, editing AI copy can take as much, and even more time and effort than just doing it the right way the first time – not to mention the cognitive atrophy that comes with this over-reliance.

I’ve come to believe that generative AI enables a single subject matter expert (SME) to produce an output of 1.25 SMEs. Will it have an impact on entry-level hiring? We are already seeing that effect.  The quip that ‘you won’t be replaced by AI, but you might be replaced by someone who learns to use AI’ has aged well. That’s exactly the trend to watch.

5. Outsourcing trends bring goodness to service providers

A little more than one-third of respondents (~34%) outsource digital marketing. That trendline will continue for at least the next two years, according to the survey. Here again, there is variance depending on the vertical market.

Digital marketing has had a tangible impact on business results too: “The contribution of digital marketing to company performance shows improvement over time with 73.2% of companies scoring 5 or above on the rating scale.”

Commentary: It’s a good time to be a consultant or freelancer. Businesses are resisting headcount growth and larger agencies are getting too expensive. Those people who are good at their jobs can comfortably build a business at rates traditional service providers just can’t match.

That’s a warning sign for marketing leaders, too: Employees who are good at their job are a flight risk. And businesses are behaving badly. The number of tech companies that report fat margins and also lay off thousands of employees on the same day is breathtaking.

This is going to bite them down the road. They will need to hire again in the future, and they’ve completely trashed their own brands. High-performing talent has options and a long memory.

6. Marketing’s value is increasingly recognized but…

“Organizations prioritize marketing capabilities to achieve higher return on investment for marketing spend,” the report says. On a scale of 1-7, respondents said marketing earns a 5.9 in terms of the “importance of marketing capabilities to an organization’s success.”

This new found appreciation for marketing is long overdue, but challenges remain:

“The most cited deficiency is not a missing skill but inadequate resourcing: 22.3% of marketers say existing capabilities simply lack the people, time, and budget needed to function effectively.”

The survey puts this into perspective, a bit later:

“Marketing headcount growth has slowed to 2.5% over the past year, down sharply from 5.4% in 2025, with companies projecting a similar modest pace of 2.6% growth in the year ahead.”

Meanwhile, sales have grown, but margins have shrunk, so pressure on cost-cutting, especially human resources, is likely to continue.

Commentary: Consultants and freelancers are good options, especially if you treat them as an extension of your team. That can help bridge the gap for talent, but there’s something far more important that marketing leaders can do: think programs, not campaigns.

Campaigns last for a short period of time. They require a lot of effort to get started and when it’s done, you’ve got to start all over again. Research. Strategy. Creative. Briefings. Review and approval. This is all just merely pushing paper around at the expense of execution.

Instead of running campaigns, structure programs that run indefinitely by building systems and processes. For example, treat email marketing as a program, not a campaign. This provides a repeatable, iterative and scalable approach, as opposed to reinventing email marketing with every campaign.

I’m not suggesting you skip strategy. What I am suggesting is that marketing builds the strategy once – and then executes. From that point forward, learn from that iteration and improve the next time.

Let your team run with it and have them brief on the progress during your meeting cadence. Revisit the research and strategy once a year, or after significant changes in leadership or market conditions.

The survey found 71% of marketing leaders view agility as key to their organization’s marketing success. You can’t possibly be agile with constant reinvention. You have to empower your team; train them well, provide left and right limits and document a decision-making process for issues that go beyond the limits set.

7. Marketing’s influence and responsibilities grow

This edition of the report has a lot of good news for marketing, too.

For example, its responsibilities have grown:

“Marketing’s formal scope of responsibility has continued to grow, with notable increases across a wide range of activities since 2025, including revenue growth (+10.3), public relations (+9.9 percentage points), and customer insight (+8.8).”

The “prove it” infatuation has moderated:

“Pressure from CEOs, boards, and CFOs to prove marketing’s value has eased slightly from 2025 levels but remains the experience of most marketing leaders.”

And marketing leaders have a seat at the strategy table:

“Marketing leaders are also participating more frequently in board meetings. By these measures, marketing’s organizational standing has strengthened.”

All this comes with a cautionary signal, too:

“The predominant response is a shift toward short-term impact over long-run gains…Marketers have devoted roughly twice as much time managing the present (68%) as preparing for the future (32%) every year since 2019.”

Commentary: The increased responsibility requires marketing leaders to delegate. You cannot do it all on your own, so hire good people and empower them to do their jobs.

Marketing should not lighten its efforts to measure results because the pressure has eased somewhat. The pressure on marketing for measurement is cyclical.

As for board meetings, it’s about time. Studies show board members with marketing experience improve shareholder returns by 3% – so it just makes sense, logically and financially, to have your marketing leadership involved in business planning.

The short-termism doesn’t strike me as alarming. In fact, I think the breakout of 70/30 seems about right. The one caveat I’d offer is that functions like public relations, brand and reputation are not built in a single fiscal quarter.

These awareness programs take consistent, high-quality effort over time to work. These do pair well with short-term lead generation programs, like PPC, paid social and email marketing.

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An easy-to-read review of 17 B2B marketing studies summarizing 2025

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April of this year will mark the seventh consecutive year I’ve provided steady summaries stemming from the world of PR software makers. When I started, I was providing updates on a dizzying array of announcements.

Many of them were around mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Too many in my book for any one company to effectively integrate them. I know that because over my career I’ve been involved, from a communications standpoint, in more than a dozen transactions.

Sometimes I was part of the acquiring company. Other times, I was part of a company being acquired. I even had a chance to do a divestiture while in-house, and then pick that divested company up as a customer years later on the consulting side. It’s given me a vantage point of what happens before, during and after these transactions.

I’ve concluded that M&A is easy to plan for and hard to execute. Executives put too much credence into their assumptions and not enough in the variables. Many fall in love with a deal, which blinds them to the risks that require mitigation, and sends a personalized invitation to join the sunk cost fallacy.

The variables are many. Employees want a purpose. Customers are fickle. Markets are unforgiving. When you start to add a second or third M&A on top of one that’s barely been swallowed, it quickly becomes a project that’s unwieldy to manage.

The pace of M&A has certainly slowed, even as I’ve pared back these missives from monthly to quarterly. The playing field I started covering in 2019 looks very different today – yet there’s still room left for one more deal, albeit one that makes sense – even as some of the old ones are still getting straightened out.

1. Signal AI acquires Memo for readership data

Media monitoring provider Signal AI announced it acquired Memo. Memo is a communications measurement platform that centers on providing readership data for placements. Instead of guessing how many people may have read an article, Memo provides data.

“Memo’s data is sourced directly from publishers via a network of data partners with direct integrations,” said Signal AI CEO David Benigson in an email exchange. “It’s not modelled or inferred, it’s based on actual readership data from the publisher side.”

Planned product integration

“This acquisition will integrate real readership metrics into Signal AI’s reputation and risk intelligence platform and services, giving Chief Communications Officers (CCOs) and reputation management teams a clearer, more holistic view of how their stories actually perform, what’s shaping their reputation, and which narratives pose a genuine threat to their brand,” the company said in a press release.

Benigson’ s email said the two companies have had “a long friendship” and initiated a formal partnership in 2025. That partnership achieved “tons of commercial traction” that eventually led to the decision to acquire the company.

“The strength of the commercial partnership, combined with clear customer demand for Memo’s dataset, led us to begin more strategic discussions towards the end of last year,” Benigson added.

Background on both companies

Memo was founded in New York in 2018. It has raised $19 million in Series A funding and has 46 employees, according to PitchBook.  Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, although PitchBook has classified the transaction as a leveraged buyout, which basically means someone borrowed money to buy the company.

Signal AI provides sophisticated media monitoring to help manage risk and reputation. It monitors “traditional media, social, podcasts, and regulatory filings to protect their brand value.” Memo has landed around 65 customers, Benigson said, which adds to the 750 customers Signal AI serves.

Singal AI was founded in 2013, employs roughly 240 people and last raised $165 million in a Series E round, bringing its total funding to $268 million, according to PitchBook.

In October of 2025, Signal AI partnered with Propel, an all-in-one PR software provider started by a former PR agency owner. The partnership provides Propel customers with more in-depth media monitoring options.

Signal AI takes a unique approach to monitoring – it aims to identify and track emerging issues early before they can snowball into business disruption. Signal AI and Memo are arguably joined at the hip in serving enterprise customers who operate “in high-reputation or high-scrutiny environments,” Benigson added.

2. Muck Rack rolls out new AI features for media relations

Muck Rack announced two new AI-powered features for identifying reporters and influencers the technology thinks you should be pitching.

First up is the Media List Agent. It will recommend “journalists based on your goals and analyzes your pitch content to improve targeting.” The agent will also work in the background to “discover relevant journalists” and also suggest “who to add or remove with clear rationale,” a company representative said in an email.

Next is AI Visibility Badges. This feature highlights “the journalists and outlets most frequently cited by generative AI models, giving you a new way to prioritize outreach.”  The badges appear for users sorting through possible contacts under “people, outlets and articles,” and users will soon be able to filter results based on their track record of AI citation.

The company also said it’s used AI to simplify Boolean searches. Its “AI Search Agent” will “translate your plain-language prompts into structured Boolean searches.” Boolean search is a logical query method that uses operators like AND, OR, and NOT to precisely combine or exclude terms for more accurate results. Some users find it tricky to employ.

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3. Onclusive finally sews its acquisitions together

About four years after buying Critical Mention, Kantar Reputation Intelligence and PRgloo, Onclusive has rolled out a unified platform. The unified platform combines the final product into four modules:

• Mention: Tracks where your brand is mentioned across news, broadcast and social media;
• Review: Create or manage press reviews or daily content;
• Contact: A database of journalists and influencers; and
• Measure: Analyze the impact of your coverage.

In 2019, prior to any M&A, I took a close look at its monitoring capabilities, which looked both thorough and expensive. Since then, Onclusive has gone through a lot of changes. It’s seen leadership turnover and hasn’t made much noise in the way of new product announcements or innovations.

The company is casting this announcement as a better user experience – rather than using separate tools, as in a best-of-breed approach. In reality, it’s joining a crowded and mature field of all-in-one PR software products. I also suspect the company’s brand recognition in the U.S. pales in comparison to the major incumbents in the PR software space.

4. PR tech briefs

• Meltwater makes it official with Reddit. Meltwater was granted Reddit partner status, which allows the company to continue accessing “Reddit’s enterprise data APIs” for media monitoring.

• Notified press release optimizer. Notified presents an AI Press Release Optimizer to “strengthen release drafts before distribution by improving structure, clarity, authority and quotability.” Notified owns GlobeNewswire.

• TV eyes a new media player. TVEyes announced an easier-to-use premium media player. The tool lets customers search, watch, clip, and analyze video and audio content with helpful features like thumbnail previews and transcripts.

• Semrush rebrands Prowly. SEO toolmaker Semrush rebranded Prowly, a PR software provider it acquired in 2020. Prowly is now the “Semrush AI PR Toolkit.” Rebranding an entire software company as a mere toolkit is quite possibly the most anti-climactic ending to an acquisition I’ve seen in the 7 years I’ve been writing about PR software.

• PRToolFinder filters for freebies. Tech directory PRToolFinder announced filters for users to find free PR software and free trials of PR software.

• Service providers turning software providers. Omnicom announced OMNI, an AI-powered system that pulls together data, technology, and expertise from across Omnicom (including after its merger with Interpublic) to help brands plan, create, buy, and measure their marketing more effectively.

5. New vendor survey data and reports

• PR inspiration. “86% of journalists say PR pitches inspire at least some stories, yet 88% delete pitches that miss their beat,” according to a survey of 900 reporters by Muck Rack.

• Change as an obstacle. 60% of PR teams surveyed “cite the rapidly shifting media landscape as their biggest challenge,” according to a Cision survey.

• AI use in PR needs no prompting. More than “90% of PR teams have already integrated generative AI into their workflows,” according to a survey by Meltwater.

PR software coverage for 2026

Here’s how to get on my radar if you are a vendor. At some point this year, I plan to write a separate and updated “comprehensive” list of PR software providers. I’ll likely place a query in Peter Shankman’s Source of Sources when I get ready to compile it.

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5 takes on Gartner’s new optimism for PR and earned media in the age of AI

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When generative AI was still fairly new, an entrepreneurial friend of mine saw an opportunity. He would create a new site, in a niche space, and use generative AI to generate a steady stream of new content for it.

The planned business model? Advertising, of course.

It didn’t last long. The site was unable to produce meaningful traffic or engagement.

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An experiment across 20 sites

Bogdan Babiak, and the team at the SEO firm SE Ranking, performed a similar experiment, as published in Search Engine Land, on a greater scale. They started by purchasing 20 new domains across 20 different industries, including business, technology and industry.

Importantly, none of these new sites had “backlinks, domain authority, brand recognition, or search history.”

Next, they identified 100 long-tail keywords for the popular “how-to” and used generative AI to generate 100 articles for each site. That’s 2,000 articles in total.

Finally, they added these sites to Google Search Console, submitted site maps and “we left the sites untouched to observe performance over time.”

Short-lived results

In the first month, about 71% of the articles had been indexed by Google Search, which Babiak calls “notable” for domains with “zero-authority.” It generated ~120,000 impressions and 244 clicks – which my math works out to ~.12 clicks per article.

The results aren’t much, but aside from setting up the experiment, the effort wasn’t much either. A well-researched blog post easily requires 4-6 hours of time or more. Generative AI requires a prompt.

That’s a promising start for a brand-new site – especially with no other promotion other than organic search. But it didn’t last. By the six-month mark, the sites had collectively earned 706,328 impressions and 1,062 clicks.

Divided by six months, that works out to about the same level of impressions and clicks each month over that time frame. Overall, it works out to about one click for every two articles.

A year later, and full 16 months after starting the experiment, those sites earned another 300,000 impressions and another ~381 clicks. In total, the sites gained 1,092,079 impressions and 1,381 clicks.

It just goes to show what many of us in marketing, who have been paying close attention to generative AI, have been saying for a while: “good content” may be subjective, but generative AI doesn’t come close to meeting the standard.

Why content generated by AI doesn’t perform

Babiak provides some sound analysis for why the content didn’t perform, including the following:

• “No backlinks or external validation.”
• “No authors, credentials, or real-world expertise.”
• “Much of the content resembled what already exists.”
• “No internal linking, topical organization, or clear hierarchy.”

Datelines and bylines have been important trust signals for branded content for a long time.  Yet the biggest factor in my assessment is the third bullet.

Generative AI works on probability, so the content it produces is statistically driven. It is not the best content, nor the worst content, but average content.

No one is going to bookmark, share, subscribe or revisit a site with average content. That’s especially since they can prompt AI for themselves and get a more personalized answer, and drill down on areas that are of their interest.

Accelerating the sea of sameness

Marketing and PR professionals working in B2B technology circles know that the “sea of sameness” has been a problem long before generative AI became commonly available. Too many companies look to see how their competitors describe things and rush to match the language.

The result has been a “sea” of content that all sounds the same. No flavor. No distinction. No informed viewpoint. All repetition. The results are telling – prospects and customers can’t understand what distinguishes one company from another.

So, what do they do? They ask trusted colleagues. They look at analyst reports. They stick to brands that are familiar – because familiarity is safer. No one is going to take a chance buying an unproven product from an unfamiliar company that sounds like they do the same thing as everyone else.

A math analogy for marketing communications

I was always capable of performing well in school as a kid growing up. I never had to work too hard to make decent grades.

That changed when I got to high school. Algebra, in particular, was challenging for me to wrap my head around. The teacher was a bit aloof, and I, as a teenager, had a lot of competing interests.

I didn’t fail the class, but I was required to take a similar class again the next year. The teacher was qualified to teach math, but his primary job was teaching music. That meant he had a completely different way of explaining Algebra – and perhaps a better way to connect.

When he explained it, I understood. Suddenly, these math problems that seemed abstract became real and logical. Math wasn’t a mystery; it was a puzzle and a solvable one at that.

That’s what I think humans bring to the table when it comes to developing marketing and communications content. Humans don’t set out to just explain the thing the way AI does; they strive to connect to readers, or content consumers, and bring context that brings ideas to the real world.

An average of the internet

If you ask 10 people the same survey question, you might get 10 different answers. However, if you ask 100 people, you’ll start to see a solid average.

If you ask 1,000 people, the average becomes clear. This is how confidence intervals in surveys work – it’s the confidence that if you ran the same survey, you’d get the same results.

These LLMs have sucked up an internet’s worth of content already. The average is set. It won’t get worse, but it also won’t get better.

There are a lot of credible SMEs that have come to a similar conclusion. Nikita Bier, who is focused on eliminating AI-generated spam on X, recently noted that he thinks the platform will be successful.

Why? “We are very close to approaching the limit of the content being indistinguishable,” he said recently. And you can see from the results of the experiment above that Google is figuring it out, too.

There are no “hacks” or shortcuts to marketing and PR. It takes time, effort, data, consistency, and perseverance. Generative AI is a useful tool for augmenting your marketing and communications team, but it’s not a replacement.

It’s definitely not a replacement for good writing. That’s not my opinion, but a conclusion we can draw on a mounting pile of data.

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Image credit: Google Gemini and the cited study

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