Summary: Pierpont Communications hosted a webinar: Beyond SEO: How Owned & Earned Media Drive AI Visibility in the fall of 2026. Experts from Meltwater and Visto interviewed made the following salient points:

  • AI search is creating a new discovery channel that businesses and organizations should focus on beyond traditional search
  • AI search platforms use website content as an important source for understanding what organizations do, what expertise they possess and how they should be described in generative answers
  • Earned media, which can be driven and influenced by PR, plays an important role in AI visibility
  • Not all news coverage carries equal weight and authority matters more than mentions
  • Message consistency across channels—web pages, blog content, earned media coverage—is essential
  • Benchmark AI visibility before kicking of a GEO strategy, focusing on relevant and different kinds of prompts (branded, informational and discovery)
  • AI visibility requires continuous optimization

Fundamental Shift Beyond Traditional Search

For more than two decades, organizations have relied on traditional search engines to help customers, prospects, investors and other stakeholders discover their brands online.

But in 2026, a growing number of people are skipping the search results page entirely and turning directly to AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity for answers.

That shift is fundamentally changing how organizations think about digital visibility.

During Pierpont’s recent webinar, Beyond SEO: How Owned & Earned Media Drive AI Visibility, I brought together two industry experts to discuss how brands can improve their presence in AI-generated answers: Christie Horgan, Senior Account Director at Meltwater, and Tom Lee, CEO and co-founder of Visto.

The conversation shone a spotlight on an important development in online marketing: visibility and discoverability are no longer solely a function of traditional SEO. Organizations that want to be found, cited, recommended, and described accurately by AI tools must think more broadly about the role of owned content and earned media.

AI Search Is Creating a New Discovery Channel

One of the webinar’s central themes was that generative AI is not replacing search entirely, but it is changing how people look for information online. AI platforms increasingly provide direct answers rather than simply presenting a list of ten blue links. As a result, the AI-generated response itself often becomes a user’s first impression of a company, product or service.

This has given rise to what many marketers are calling Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) or simply AI visibility. According to Tom, GEO builds upon traditional SEO rather than replacing it. Organizations still need strong technical SEO fundamentals, but they must also optimize website content so AI systems can easily find, index, understand, trust and incorporate it into answers.

The key distinction is that AI models are trying to answer questions, not simply rank webpages.

Your Website Is Still the Foundation

One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding AI visibility is that websites somehow matter less.

In reality, the opposite is true.

AI search platforms use website content as an important source for understanding what organizations do, what expertise they possess and how they should be described in generative answers. According to Tom, a company’s website serves as one of the most direct ways to communicate with AI systems.

“Owned content on your website is how you communicate directly to your customers, to your prospects, and to AI bots,” Tom explained. He then recommended that organizations should focus on creating:

  • Original content backed by facts and expertise
  • Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
  • Case studies
  • Research-driven content
  • Comparison content
  • Clearly structured pages that answer questions directly

AI platforms tend to favor content that is factual, authoritative, easy to access and rich with original insights. Fresh perspectives and proprietary knowledge are particularly valuable because they help AI systems move beyond simply recycling information already available elsewhere.

Earned Media Plays an Outsized Role in AI Visibility

While owned content helps organizations explain themselves, earned media helps validate those claims.

As Christie explained, earned media includes news articles, interviews, expert commentary, trade publication coverage and other forms of independent third-party content. These sources provide a level of credibility that brands cannot create on their own.

That credibility matters because AI systems frequently rely on authoritative third-party sources when generating responses. Meltwater’s own research analyzed approximately 5.3 million citations across major AI platforms and found that earned media accounted for nearly 40% of citations.

“It’s not just influencing the person that’s reading the article or consuming the content,” Christie pointed out. “But these credible third-party sources can also help shape the information that AI platforms are using.”

And one of the best ways to influence online news coverage is through proactive public relations.

Organizations that consistently earn coverage in respected news outlets, industry publications and expert forums create stronger signals of authority that AI systems can draw upon when answering questions about their industry, company, brand, services, or experts.

Authority Matters More Than Mentions

Another important point from the discussion was that not all coverage carries equal weight.

More substantive coverage that explains what a company does, provides expert commentary, includes supporting data and establishes expertise tends to be more valuable from an AI visibility perspective.

As Christie said, “A mention creates awareness, a credible, substantive story builds authority, and authority is what’s going to matter most here.”

So the goal should not simply be trying to generate more mentions. Instead, organizations should focus on strengthening their authority around the topics they want to own, because AI systems appear particularly responsive to content that demonstrates expertise, relevance and credibility across multiple trusted sources—including earned media.

Consistency Across Channels Is Essential

A recurring theme throughout the webinar was the importance of message consistency.

When an organization’s website, blog content, earned media coverage, executive thought leadership and other digital assets reinforce the same core themes and messages, AI systems gain a clearer understanding of how to describe that organization.

In practice, this means:

  • Aligning website content with earned PR and media coverage
  • Reinforcing key messages across multiple channels
  • Creating content around the same strategic topics
  • Consistently communicating areas of expertise

The stronger the alignment between owned and earned content, the stronger the signals being sent to AI systems.

Benchmark Before You Optimize

Both panelists emphasized that organizations should start by understanding how they currently appear in AI-generated responses. “You need to let the data drive what you actually do,” Tom urged webinar attendees. “Don’t use anecdotal evidence.”

That means evaluating:

  • Whether your brand appears in relevant prompts
  • How AI platforms describe your organization
  • Which competitors appear most often
  • Which sources are being cited by AI tools
  • Whether your desired messaging is coming through consistently

Only after establishing that baseline can organizations identify meaningful gaps and opportunities and develop a proactive AI visibility plan.

Rather than asking, “How do we get more coverage?” communications teams should begin asking, “Where are our authority gaps?” and “Which topics do we need to own more effectively?”

Prompt Strategy and Measurement

Measuring AI visibility requires more than periodically searching for your brand in ChatGPT or Claude. Organizations should monitor different types of prompts across multiple AI platforms and track how frequently they appear, how they are described, which competitors are recommended and which sources AI systems cite.

As Tom explained, branded, informational and discovery prompts each reveal something different about a company’s visibility and authority.

AI Visibility Requires Continuous Optimization

Perhaps the most important takeaway from the webinar is that AI visibility is not a one-time project.

AI visibility isn’t a “set it and forget it” strategy. Organizations need a repeatable process for collecting data, identifying opportunities, creating and optimizing content, measuring results and continually refining their approach. Or, as I often call it, “constant gardening.”

Conclusion

As AI-driven discovery becomes increasingly common (AI search is rapidly becoming the default for many Google searchers), the organizations that succeed will be those that combine strong owned content, effective public relations and ongoing measurement into a unified strategy.

If you want to watch the entire webinar, it’s available on our YouTube channel.