PR and earned media budgets will double by 2027, says Gartner. It’s a strong signal that earned authority is moving back to the centre.

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For years, PR has been the poor relation in marketing budgets. That’s starting to change. More prospects are now using ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude to answer the questions that used to send them to Google.

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Visibility Is Changing in the Age of AI Search

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Visibility is now about more than rankings and clicks. It’s also whether your brand is mentioned in those answers, and what gets said about your business. That’s generative engine optimisation, or GEO, in plain English: making sure you show up in the answers people are now searching for.

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But there’s another implication here too. If earned media becomes even more important, we need a healthy business media landscape to match. Quality outlets matter - for readers, for brands and for the quality of information LLMs draw from.

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For companies, the practical response is straightforward: invest in PR for visibility and reputation in an AI-led discovery world. At Rostrum, this is what we do, and our senior team are hands-on with media relations day after day.

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If GEO isn’t part of your PR strategy yet, it should be. Get in touch to discuss what that looks like in practice.

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