Earned in the Age of AI: The New Brand Visibility Imperative

By Jonny Bentwood, Global President, Data and Analytics

We’re standing at a precipice that mirrors only two previous technological transformations in my career: the dotcom boom and the launch of the iPhone. But this is different. This is our third major tipping point, and it’s potentially the most profound.

In the past, people navigated Google with critical thinking. They’d skip past sponsored content, carefully examining information to find the truth. Nearly 60% of Google searches are zero-click meaning they never actually resulted in useful discovery. Now, everything has changed.

Generative AI has become our primary information source, driven by a psychological phenomenon called “anchor bias.” When we receive an AI-generated response, we tend to accept it immediately, stopping our search right there. We look at the result and think, “Yeah, that’s great,” without further investigation.

The numbers are both exciting and somewhat unsettling:

67% of Gen Z and 53% of millennials turn to AI tools instead of Google
39% of consumers use Gen AI for research before making purchases
47% rely on AI for product recommendations
A 1,300% increase in consumer Gen AI usage during the last holiday shopping period.

But this isn’t just a consumer phenomenon. In the B2B world, the impact is even more dramatic:

89% of B2B buyers use Gen AI as part of their buying process
95% anticipate using Gen AI to support decision-making in the next year
90% click through on AI-recommended suggestions
Over 90% of B2B buyers purchasing solutions over $1 million report positive results from AI-guided research.

We’ve entered what communication experts are calling the AI Reputation Economy – a landscape where AI systems don’t just retrieve information, but actively form and share opinions about organizations.

When someone asks about your company, they no longer receive a list of websites. Instead, they get a synthesized narrative – an AI-generated perspective drawn from countless sources, delivered with the authoritative voice of an “objective” expert.

Over 90% of AI visibility is driven by citations from earned media – a statistic that should electrify every communications professional. This doesn’t even include top-tier media outlets like CNN and the New York Times, which have banned Gen AI. This 90% number is staggering. And who understands earned media more than PR.

In 2024, SEO was a $75 billion industry. I’m sorry to SEO, but PR is the new SEO and public relations can take the lead. The only argument people have on this is what to call this space (GEO, AEO, GenAIO) – I am a data person not a branding expert, but the conclusion is the same.

The remaining sources are fascinating in that 7% comes from social media but not from TikTok or Instagram. Instead, Reddit has emerged as a critical platform. Gen AI loves Reddit’s authentic, long-form, anonymous conversations. The platform’s user-generated content provides a depth that other social media cannot match.

There are a number of nuances in how different platforms generate their responses. ChatGPT runs on Bing search; evaluates content through title tags, meta descriptions, URL slugs, content snippets; strongly prefers Wikipedia entries, and is optimal for iPhone users (especially with Apple Intelligence).

Google AI, on the other hand, follows traditional SEO ranking factors; uses PageRank-like algorithms; is domain-agnostic, and is more optimal for demographics who use Android devices. And Perplexity is different again, using a unique semantic content discovery system and finding the most semantically similar content, whether a full article, a webpage fragment, or even a PDF. It also likes user-generated content, for instance from Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn or G2.

While understanding generic brand visibility is important, we need to recognize that customers ask hyper-specific questions: Not “Which hair dryer?”, but “Which hair dryer has the best attachment versatility for curly hair?”

And with millions of web sites influencing GenAI, we need to be smart and understand which places we need to focus. In this, the research reveals a critical pattern – the 80:20 rule applies. In this scenario (which has played out across multiple brands), one-third of recommendations often come from just 10 websites.

The question you need to ask is, “why does Gen AI pick those sites?” The answer is clear and unambiguous: Gen AI loves comparison content – listicles that comprehensively evaluate products.

The message is clear: create content that AI wants to consume.

If focusing on earned media and developing a Reddit strategy are the initial optimization strategies, then looking at content that you control is the next high priority. And for this there are a few go-to approaches that make a huge difference.

Avoid JavaScript-heavy websites. AI can’t read them. Detail your content in your meta-descriptions. Use semantic, descriptive URLs. Implement LLMs.txt on your website (add a llms.txt markdown file to websites to provide Gen AI-friendly content). And finally, add agent analytics to your website. Just as you add Google Analytics, lets add a metric layer to understand every time GenAI queries your website so you know what is working (or not) to optimize.

Traditional SEO is becoming obsolete. Only 12% of ChatGPT results overlap with Google searches. Backlinks now have minimal impact, as around 96% of the time, they’re virtually irrelevant to AI citations. This is also true for traffic – no matter how much volume your website gets, it doesn’t influence whether GenAI picks you up.

Start optimizing press releases. They aren’t dead – they’re now feeding platforms for Gen AI. It’s time to rip up the old PR playbook and focus on what is powering the GenAI ecosystem. You’ve had your tier 1 media list and your tier 1 influence list; now you need your tier 1 AI list.

The time is now: your competitors are tentatively exploring what can be done but no-one is taking a true leadership position. How often are we in a place where the opportunity to lead from the front has been given to you?

Here is a three-step process to help you get started:

Benchmark your AI visibility against your competitors, to identify which sites influence GenAI by platform and why
Optimize and develop your data-based AI strategies to boost your visibility
Defend and track sentiment and feedback to adapt strategies and improve brand perception.

Three paths lie ahead. You could ignore this shift, risking irrelevance. You could dabble in AI optimization, yielding limited results). Or you could embrace comprehensive transformation, positioning for long-term advantage.

The world has changed. Public relations professionals are uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. We understand earned media. We know how to craft narratives. We are the architects of the new AI-driven communication landscape. The future has arrived. The question is: Are you ready to lead?