How will the relationship between public relations and artificial intelligence play out in 2026? In 2025, we saw the potential of earned and owned in the future of large language model-driven search.
As we head into 2026, with AI search and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) on top of mind, Telum Media spoke with Matt Collette, CEO and Founder of Sequencr AI, to hear about what this future of PR holds and more importantly, how industry professionals can best prepare for the journey ahead.
GEO has emerged as the latest frontier in PR. What does it mean to create for large language models and optimise for GEO?
What’s changed is how differently the average person can now manipulate search results as compared to before. To understand GEO, communicators must first understand the changes in search.
Search used to be basic. Google “pet food” with a few keywords, and product images and links would pop up, along with search engine optimised results. You’d go through a journey of opening the links, consuming that content, and synthesising the information.
With AI search, you can end up with results from 10 different websites at once, the information already synthesised by the LLM and returned as digestible information.
The kinds of questions people ask have also changed dramatically. A 2024 study found that 70 per cent of ChatGPT search queries were completely unique. Users are also not only asking very different questions but query stacking as well. Moreover, AI models now serve as filters that suggest next courses of action.
We’ve gone from a world where we key in a search, get a variety of results, and go through the information journey, to having AI synthesising those results and guiding the search journey.
In this reality, companies and communicators need to start considering: how have queries changed? How are they being stacked? How will they evolve? What are people asking about your company? What owned or earned content will prompt LLMs to trust, retrieve, and provide to their users? Search is no longer static, because the ways people are searching have changed dramatically.
As AI search continues to shape corporate reputation, managing GEO means managing the way that people think about your company.
When it comes to PR in the age of GEO, it's more than uploading a press release. How do storytelling, reputation, and thought leadership shape GEO’s performance and strengthen brand visibility in AI-driven search?
There’s a lot of debate inside companies: who owns GEO? Marketing? The search engine team? Or is it comms?
The answer is all. Different models surface different issues, and different teams have responsibility for the different types of content and communication. Generally, what LLMs say about you is almost a representative sample of what the Internet thinks about you, and PR is essential in shaping this.
To get a sense of what models are currently surfacing about their company, communicators should conduct an audit and use that to inform their strategies, pitches, and media engagement, especially with publications that have authority within AI search.
In addition to earned and news, owned content is an important source for generative AI, which comms teams are also responsible for shaping. Comms will need to review dated blog entries and old corporate newsrooms and whether such information should be crawled by LLMs.
Another way to strengthen brand visibility is something that communications already does on a day-to-day basis. What LLMs love about earned and owned content is communications’ logical way of writing. Take a press release as example: the key news in the first paragraph, followed by a funnel of information. LLMs - and the way that they learn - prefer this structured approach.
In this new world, comms leaders will need to constantly consider how information is being discovered, how corporate reputation is being evaluated, and how purchase decisions are being made.
What factors go into how AI-led search perceives brand reputation and trust?
Different factors go into which sources end up being referenced. Communicators need to consider what might affect the questions asked about your organisation, especially those queried most.
For example, people turn to AI search before making B2B purchases. The LLM will quickly surface and synthesise both positive and negative details about a provider, including partnerships and product quality.
Another factor is the model you’re optimising for. Each has rules on what’s considered authoritative content. ChatGPT sometimes references Reddit; Gemini will reference social media content - specifically YouTube, X, and Instagram. Of course, reviews across websites have impact as well.
Generative AI is non-deterministic, and one query is not always representative. With the same prompt, you’re going to get a different response each time - different series of words, combinations of facts, and sites surfaced.
Are there ways to measure AI share of voice and monitor brand health effectively? For teams adapting to GEO, what steps can they take?
The best thing is to get an audit to see how your organisation is represented. Then, you can plan a GEO-informed comms strategy to address the findings.
Each model has a different way of presenting positive or negative information. Sometimes, Gemini is more negative than ChatGPT or vice versa, depending on the question and company. Setting up dashboards can help with monitoring reach, visibility, and sentiment across different LLMs.
Another thing is to revisit your website’s structure. Schema markups make a big difference in how LLMs surf and identify information on a webpage. Even technical tweaks to facilitate information retrieval and machine readability can improve how models represent information about your company or products.
As GEO continues to evolve, what's a suggestion you have for communicators concerned about the ethics or perception of AI usage in PR?
One issue that might arise is one of copyright infringement. There are ongoing cases looking into whether companies might have violated or circumvented them as part of training their models.
For communicators, it’s always good to keep in mind how you’re prompting models. That’s where the ethical lines start to come into play: is there intent to violate copyright when you are prompting? Or is the intent to create original content based on what’s been released by your company?
As practical guidance, write prompts that don’t infringe copyright and steer away from the ethical challenges that others have already gone through.
How would you suggest agencies and in-house teams go about implementing, or even just considering, AI programs to get a head start in 2026?
To start, the corporate policy environment is very important.
Back in 2022, many companies had knee-jerk reactions to generative AI. Policies tended to be restrictive and negative - “don’t use ChatGPT at work” or “it’s going to produce outputs that may infringe copyright.” These policies have had negative outcomes, with employees feeling uncomfortable discussing or sharing how they use AI at work and feeling undervalued if they do.
But there are various AI policies that you can write, ones that are functional, strategic, and in part, mission statements. For example, there are some very compelling ones from organisations concerned about the environmental impact of generative AI and how to manage that. Through constructive AI policies, you can incentivise value-aligned behaviours so that increasingly, you become an AI-native organisation.
Proficiency is another big issue. Statistics show that 70 per cent of generative AI users are novices, and only 10 per cent of all users are considered proficient. So, training remains an important area. I’ve seen many companies have an expectation that people will use AI more, without investing in helping people understand how to do so.
Most people think that generative AI is best used to produce content: “help me write an email,” “help me write a blog post.” But generative AI goes beyond that. For example, with simulation and prediction, you can run messaging by it to see potential audience reacts.
If there’s one thing I would recommend, it’s to understand the technology so that you can see the full spectrum of possibilities with it, because it is quite exciting when you start to apply it to these different things.
After generative AI, you can move onto the implications of agentic AI. Most people, when talking about Generative Engine Optimisation, stop at ChatGPT. But beyond that, there’s a world of agentic processes where models can execute tasks for users, and it will have a big impact on the information economy and search.
This is the world that we’re heading into, and that’s where comms leaders need to think towards: how different the world will become and prepare for that, versus how the world currently is and reacting to the present. As an industry, we need to become more future-oriented.
Hear more from Matt Collette in Telum Media's upcoming webinar (5th February) looking at the Top AI tools for 2026. Register for free here.
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Every few years, someone declares the death of the media release.
Today, the arguments sound familiar. Journalists don't read them anymore. Everything is social-first. AI is replacing traditional media outreach. It's all about the pitch. Press releases are becoming little more than AI-generated filler.
And yet, when we speak with journalists across Asia Pacific and the Middle East, a different picture emerges.
Media releases aren't dead, but expectations around them have changed significantly.
We've analysed more than 10,000 Journalist Interest Survey responses in the Telum Media platform collected over the past five years, alongside insights gathered from conversations with editors, reporters, and producers across the region.
Key takeaways:
- Journalists still value useful PR content
- Relevance matters more than reach
- The pitch and the release serve different roles
- The best releases reduce friction for journalists
- Modern releases need to support multiple platforms
The conclusion is clear: journalists still value media releases, but they value them for different reasons than they once did.
The media release has evolved from a distribution tool into something far more strategic.
The media release is no longer the story
For decades, many PR professionals treated the media release as the centrepiece of media relations activity.
Write the release. Send it widely. Hope for coverage - “spray and pray”.
That approach was far from perfect, but you could get away with it in an era when newsrooms were larger, competition for attention was lower, and journalists had more time to evaluate incoming information.
Today's reality is very different.
Journalists are producing content across multiple platforms, often with smaller teams and tighter deadlines. Their inboxes are flooded with pitches, announcements, thought leadership submissions, and increasingly, AI-generated content.
As a result, journalists have become far more selective about what earns their attention.
The modern media release is no longer just about news stories. It has become a source-of-truth asset, a newsroom resource, and a content hub that supports broader communications activity.
The best PR teams understand this shift.
“The strongest message from journalists can be summarised in a single phrase: ‘Understand what I cover’. Relevance remains the most important factor in successful media engagement.”
What journalists are actually rejecting
One of the most revealing findings from our analysis is that journalists are not rejecting PR content altogether.
What they're rejecting is low-value outreach.
Across thousands of responses, the same frustrations appeared repeatedly:
- Irrelevant pitches
- Generic outreach
- Mass distribution
- Weak story angles
- Excessive follow-ups
In other words, this is less a rejection of media releases and more a rejection of poor media relations practice.
The strongest message from journalists can be summarised in a single phrase:
"Understand what I cover."
Relevance remains the most important factor in successful media engagement. In fact, our journalist surveys over the past two years have seen a sharp increase in a desire for both relevance and personalisation in pitches.
Journalists increasingly assess pitches within seconds. If the connection to their beat, audience, or current priorities isn't immediately obvious, the opportunity is often lost before the email is even opened.
The pitch and the release have different jobs
One of the biggest misconceptions in modern media relations is treating the pitch and the release as the same thing.
They are not.
The pitch exists to earn attention; the release exists to support the story.
The best pitches are:
- Brief
- Human
- Relevant
- Contextual
- Conversational
The best releases are:
- Structured
- Factual
- Complete
- Reusable
- Easy to reference
At a recent Telum Media event, a senior journalist described the fastest way to kill a pitch with a single word: “Respect”. Or a lack thereof.
A generic greeting. A story unrelated to their beat. A mass-produced email that demonstrates no understanding of their audience.
All signal a lack of respect for the journalist's time and expertise.
High-performing PR teams increasingly write pitches and releases for different audiences. The pitch is written for the journalist. The release is written for the journalist's audience.
That distinction matters.
Why journalists still value media releases
Despite predictions of their demise, journalists continue to actively request media releases.
But they want releases that help them work more efficiently.
The most common requests include concise writing, clear headlines, strong news angles, supporting data (with downloadable images and assets), spokesperson access, and easy-to-use formats.
These preferences reveal the modern role of the release: it functions as a workflow tool.
A strong release helps journalists:
- Understand the story quickly
- Verify information
- Access supporting materials
- Build content efficiently
The best releases reduce friction. And in today's newsroom environment, reducing friction is often more valuable than generating hype.
Think beyond media coverage
Another major shift is that media releases are increasingly serving multiple audiences.
A modern release doesn’t just support journalists; it might also support clients and prospects, employees, investors and analysts, partners, and search visibility.
Rather than creating a single-use document, leading communications teams are building content ecosystems.
The release becomes the foundation for:
- Media outreach
- Newsroom content
- Executive communications
- Social media content
- Email campaigns
- Sales collateral
- Thought leadership activity
This approach not only improves consistency but also increases the return on investment from every announcement.
The role of the modern media release
Not every story needs a release
Perhaps one of the most important lessons is recognising when a media release is the wrong tool.
Releases tend to perform best when there is:
- Genuine news value
- Multiple stakeholder audiences
- A need for factual consistency
- Strong supporting assets
- Broader business significance
They are often less effective for internal milestones framed as major news (or self-congratulatory announcements), generic thought leadership, and untargeted mass outreach.
In some situations, a targeted pitch, LinkedIn strategy, executive commentary programme, or direct relationship-based outreach may be more effective.
Good communications strategy isn't about defaulting to a media release; it's about choosing the right tool for the objective.
A framework for modern media releases
If there is one word that captures what journalists are asking for today, it is respect.
At Telum Media, we summarise this through the RESPECT framework:
R – Relevance
Make it relevant to the journalist, their audience and the moment.
E – Efficiency
Help journalists work faster through clear, concise, and usable content.
S – Substance
Provide genuine value through expertise, data, insight, or access.
P – Personalisation
Demonstrate that you've done your homework.
E – Ecosystem
Think beyond the release and consider how it supports broader communications goals.
C – Clarity
Make the key message immediately obvious.
T – Timing
Reach out at the right time, not simply any time.
What journalists are asking for in a pitch / media release: RESPECT
The future of the media release
The debate over whether media releases are dead misses the point.
The more useful question is how do we make releases work better in today’s media environment?
Journalists still value relevant information, credible sources, strong story angles, and efficient communication. Media releases continue to play an important role in delivering those things.
But success today depends less on the existence of the release itself and more on how strategically it is used.
The media release remains a valuable communications tool.
Just not in the way many of us were taught to use it.
FAQs
Are media releases still useful in 2026?
Yes. Journalists still value media releases, but these days want targeted outreach, relevance to their beat, alignment with their audience, and contextual pitching.
What makes a media release useful to journalists?
Journalists are looking for releases in a format that helps them work efficiently. Which means releases that are concise, factual, with a clear angle, contain usable quotes, and come with downloadable assets and supporting data.
What is the difference between a pitch and a media release?
A pitch earns the journalist’s attention in their cluttered Inbox. A media release supports the story by providing structured, factual, and reusable information relevant to their audience.
With more than 30 years’ experience spanning journalism, corporate communications and media intelligence, Reuben Aitchison is Telum Media’s Head of Insights and Communications.
Explore Telum Media tools that help PR teams pitch with precision.
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