EARN THE EVIDENCE the machines believe.
AI does not trust your website. It trusts what everyone else says about you. 84% of AI citations come from earned media, 0.3% from paid. Digital PR places you in Forbes, Outlook, Business Standard, Hindustan Times, Digital Journal, Fox and the trade press the engines already read, and measures it in branded search, referrals and Share of Decision. Never in ad-value equivalents.
AI does not trust your website. It trusts what everyone else says about you: the publications a cautious buyer, and a model, would check. Forbes, Outlook, Business Standard, Hindustan Times, Digital Journal, Fox, and the trade press that matters in your category. Mentions of a brand on other sites correlate three times more strongly with AI visibility than backlinks do. We place you there, through editors we have published with before, consistently and everywhere, so the machine has a reason to pick you when nobody types your name.
The domains each engine cites when it recommends a competitor, and which of them never mention you. The target list is drawn from this, not from a media database.
The outlets, review sites, comparison pages and communities for your category, listed in the proposal so you can judge them.
Data pieces, founder commentary and product news with a real angle, pitched to the people who cover your category.
Earned coverage and expert quotes in the titles buyers and machines read. Paid contributor space is labelled as paid, never passed off as earned.
Asking real customers for reviews on the sites that matter. Never paying for a sentiment: the FTC rule and the UK DMCC Act both ban it.
Reddit and forum participation as the brand, never posing as customers. Reddit removed about 25,000 spam posts a day in Q1 2026; the shortcut is gone.
The best-of lists, comparison pages and category roundups that AI answers lean on, with your brand in them on merit.
Branded search, referral traffic and Share of Decision, reported monthly. Never advertising value equivalency.
Branded search, referral traffic and Share of Decision, never advertising value equivalency. A placement counts when it is on a source the engines cite for your category, and we show which ones those are every month.
This practice feeds the loop its evidence. Breadth and consistency move the number more than one big logo, so the report counts sources citing you, not just links, and Share of Decision is rerun on the same prompt set every month, so PR is measured on the same yardstick as everything else.
Citation-source map built from the AI answers in your category. Target list agreed. Stories drafted. Review programme started with real customers.
First coverage on the sources the engines already cite. Breadth growing across press, review sites, comparison pages and communities, because breadth beats one big logo.
Citations in AI answers shifting towards you, branded search up, and Share of Decision reported against month zero.
These markers are how we run the practice, not an industry benchmark. First placements come in weeks; a shift in what AI cites takes months, and consistency matters more than any single hit.
We earned an interactive display brand 500+ links from the publications buyers and AI engines trust, then turned that authority into search visibility.
“AB Media scaled our customer acquisition 40X in 18 months while tripling our domain authority.”
SOURCED WHERE A SOURCE EXISTS
Worth it when you have a steady flow of news and your category is decided by third-party lists and AI answers. If neither is true yet, start with the review programme and the citation-source map, and add press when there is something to say.
SOURCE: Seedcamp, when to hire a PR agency
The two overlap. We aim for coverage that people and AI engines read, and the links follow. Any paid link is marked sponsored, as Google’s spam policies require.
SOURCE: Search Engine Journal; Google Search Central, spam policies
It is the biggest lever there is. 84% of AI citations come from earned media. Breadth and consistency across many sources matter more than one big logo.
SOURCE: Muck Rack via AI Magazine, 25M+ links; Seer Interactive
They show up in more of the third-party sources AI reads. Brand mentions on other sites correlate 0.664 with AI Overview visibility; backlinks 0.218.
SOURCE: Ahrefs, AI Overview brand correlation study
We name the target outlets, review sites and communities for your category before you sign, drawn from the sources the engines already cite for your competitors.
SOURCE: Reboot Online, questions to ask a digital PR agency
Retainer. Pay per placement shifts the risk to the agency but rewards easy, low-relevance hits, and “guaranteed” spots are usually paid space in disguise.
SOURCE: PR News; CommPRO
We scope it after the audit, because the cost depends on how many publications and markets the engines rely on in your category. For context, the average retainer was $5,458 a month in a survey of about 70 agencies, 54% of them UK-based.
SOURCE: BuzzStream digital PR survey; Siege Media
First placements in weeks. A shift in what AI cites takes months, which is why the report counts sources citing you every month rather than waiting for the headline number.
SOURCE: SEO Works, digital PR is not a quick fix
Branded search, referral traffic and Share of Decision, reported monthly. Never advertising value equivalency, which measures nothing a buyer did.
SOURCE: MarketingProfs, PR attribution 2026
As the brand, where the community allows it. Never posing as customers. Reddit removed about 25,000 spam posts and comments a day in Q1 2026, and a caught account costs more than it ever earned.
SOURCE: eMarketer, Reddit GEO crackdown
By asking real customers, yes. Paying for a particular sentiment is illegal: the FTC rule from 21 October 2024 and the UK DMCC Act from 6 April 2025 both ban it.
SOURCE: FTC, fake reviews rule; CMS, DMCC Act
They are paid contributor space, not earned coverage, and we label them that way if you choose to use them. They do not count towards the sources-citing-you number.
SOURCE: Axia PR, Forbes Council membership
We use cookies to measure how the site is used and how our ads perform. Necessary cookies always run. Cookie policy
