Earned media now powers AI trust and citations. Stacker’s Earned Media Edge report shows how brands can scale word-of-mouth and measure visibility in 2026.
As marketing and content teams wrapped up 2025 and set their 2026 strategies, there was an onslaught of predictions and thought leadership about how brand marketing is evolving in the age of AI.
All signs point to earned media being the most important input for AI to decipher what information is fresh and credible before citing and distilling it, acting as an arbiter of trust and authority. Yet, many brands are still operating with pre-AI playbooks, either unaware of how dramatically the rules have changed or overwhelmed by advice on strategy.
Stacker's latest report, The Earned Media Edge: Achieving Word of Mouth at Scale in 2026, filters out signals from noise. It looks at the shifting relationship between AI and earned media from our unique vantage point— one that brings together media outlets seeking more sustainable content sources with the brands that need to reach them. Influenced by insights from our customers, including Hims & Hers, Shopify, Mercury, and SoFi, the report includes data from thousands of media outlets we reach through our earned distribution platform.
Now that we know the value of earned media to AI algorithms, the question becomes: how do we leverage it? PR and comms experts need to fully grasp the interconnectedness between earned press and AI visibility to harness its full capabilities to achieve word of mouth — but on a much larger scale. It’s not about a press release, it’s about real earned media wins.
In 2026, “Media relations are becoming machine relations,” said Gab Ferree, Founder of Off the Record, a communications industry community, in a webinar with Axios HQ. "It's on the comms professionals to learn the patterns [of AI] and then take action on them.”
PR strategists must now form multi-layered playbooks, having to consider which AI models they want to become visible in, and which media outlets have relationships with those models. For instance, Claude uses content from sources like the CDC, whereas ChatGPT might prefer AP News.
How media and AI have become intertwined goes even deeper, forming what we call a “New Media Ecosystem Loop.”
This new paradigm reprioritizes branded owned media as journalists become increasingly stretched and turn to AI more to narrow down sources for their stories. In this ultra-competitive market, if reporters don’t see rich, credible content like original articles or LinkedIn posts, they “move on,” said Amanda Coffee, Communications Leader, PRWeek 40 under 40 2024, Bury the Lede Substack in Stacker’s report.
The bar has been raised for owned media to carry more weight than just an online bulletin board for company news, with companies like Zillow and Salesforce developing in-house newsrooms. Steve Kearns, Senior Director Customer Evangelism and Community Marketing, Jasper AI, gives a helpful yardstick in our whitepaper: "Every piece of owned content should probably be interesting enough to turn into earned media, because that would mean it is newsworthy and industry-relevant,” he said.
The risks of an undercooked PR and AI strategy are high: according to research by Axios HQ and Off the Record, 45% of PR pros have seen AI create something that puts brands at risk.
In our whitepaper, get the breakdown of what industry research you should pay attention to, uncover the new roles of local and trade press in AI, and get original insights from leaders across PR, Comms, AI, and some of our own:
Stacker also provides an in-depth 2026 Earned Media Checklist, detailing what your teams need to do now to compete, including steps for strategy, content, distribution, monitoring, and measurement.
Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock / Canva
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