A new benchmark from Outcomes Rocket, drawing on a global survey of 858 marketing and public relations professionals, finds that AI-driven search has quietly become one of the most consequential forces reshaping how brands allocate PR budgets - and yet a deep disconnect remains between investing in visibility and converting that visibility into measurable business outcomes.

Nearly half of brands have increased PR spending because of AI

The report, titled "PR's Authority Moment: 2026 Benchmark on AI, Visibility & Revenue" and published by Outcomes Rocket in 2026, documents a structural shift in how organisations think about public relations. Data was collected in March 2026 via Prolific, a research platform for pre-screened professional respondents. The sample spans sectors including professional services, SaaS/technology, ecommerce, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, and education, with respondents ranging from individual contributors to C-suite executives.

According to Outcomes Rocket, 44.8% of organisations have increased PR spending as a direct result of AI-driven search. Of those, 9.0% report significant increases. Another 32.5% say AI has produced no change in spending, while 11.1% say it is still too early to assess impact and 8.3% are unsure. The numbers point to a market in transition. Some organisations have connected the rise of AI-powered search to a concrete budget response; a larger portion remains in a holding pattern.

The underlying logic is not complicated. AI systems - from ChatGPT to Google's AI Overviews to Perplexity - synthesise responses that pull from sources they identify as authoritative, credible, and trustworthy. A brand that earns consistent third-party coverage in high-quality publications is more likely to appear in those synthesised answers than one whose presence is limited to its own channels. PR, historically measured by media impressions and share of voice, now carries a new function: feeding the signals that AI search algorithms use to evaluate source credibility.

Tracking that shift has become an industry preoccupation. Tools designed to measure how frequently a brand appears in AI-generated responses have multiplied rapidly since late 2024, with platforms including Adobe, Amplitude, and others launching dedicated AI visibility products through 2025. The growth of these tools reflects a broader reorientation in how marketing teams think about brand presence.

The AEO signal: authority, expertise, and trust

At the technical level, the report centres on a concept called AEO - Authority, Expertise, and Trustworthiness. These are the signals that AI systems evaluate when deciding which sources to cite in generated responses. The framework maps closely to Google's longstanding E-E-A-T guidelines, but applies more broadly across generative AI platforms.

According to Outcomes Rocket, 72.5% of organisations are intentionally using PR to build AEO signals for AI search visibility. That is a high adoption rate in raw terms. But the execution picture is more uneven. Only 21.8% have clearly identified AEO as a defined strategic priority. Another 50.7% invest in it to some degree without a formal strategy, and 27.8% do not target these signals at all.

This gap between broad awareness and structured execution characterises much of the report. Organisations know that AI search has changed the rules of visibility. Fewer have built the processes to respond systematically.

The AEO concept has entered the marketing lexicon alongside GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and related frameworks, all of which describe the practice of structuring content and managing online presence to improve how AI systems retrieve and cite information. Google's John Mueller has cautioned against treating these acronyms as silver bullets, but the underlying practice - earning credible third-party coverage that AI systems will recognise and cite - is well established as a meaningful ranking input. Research published in 2025 found that third-party brand mentions have become critical signals for AI search visibility, with 78% of marketers rating them as either extremely or moderately important.

PR integration with marketing and sales: still patchy

Seven in ten organisations now say PR is important in their go-to-market efforts, according to Outcomes Rocket. That represents a meaningful shift from PR's historical position as an awareness-only function. Nearly half (48.7%) report full integration of PR with marketing and sales, while 36.6% describe partial integration.

The structural picture looks reasonably mature. The operational picture does not.

According to Outcomes Rocket, only 13.1% of organisations share earned media coverage directly with sales teams. Just 6.1% feed PR insights into sales enablement and training. These are striking numbers given how frequently the same organisations describe PR as important to revenue generation. The coverage gets generated; it then sits largely unused outside the communications function.

Repurposing of PR outputs is also limited. Only 33.2% use earned media content in marketing campaigns or product collateral. Just 21.7% repurpose coverage into owned content such as blogs, newsletters, or social posts. And only 14.4% track URL-level data to measure the downstream impact of media placements on web traffic or conversions.

The practical consequence is that most organisations lack the data infrastructure to make a persuasive internal case for PR's contribution to pipeline. Budget constraints are cited as the top challenge by 30.9% of respondents. But the next-largest barrier is the absence of clear KPIs or tracking processes, cited by 26.7%. Difficulty linking PR to downstream outcomes - pipeline influence, sales impact - sits at 25.4%. Limited tools for monitoring traffic from coverage account for 25.2%, while disconnected data across PR, marketing, and sales systems affects 21.3%.

Measurement practices lag strategic ambitions

Half of organisations still rely on traditional metrics - mentions, impressions, share of voice - as their primary measure of PR impact, according to Outcomes Rocket. A growing segment is extending measurement toward digital signals. Website traffic (43.7%) and referral visits (41.3%) are now tracked alongside traditional measures by a meaningful share of the sample. Monitoring of brand mentions and citations in AI search results has reached 41.1% adoption, a notable figure given how recently the capability emerged.

But 11.5% of organisations do not track PR impact at all. That segment has not shrunk despite the growing pressure on PR functions to demonstrate business value.

The measurement challenge sits at the intersection of two problems. One is technical: PR, marketing, and sales data tend to live in separate systems, making attribution across the full customer journey difficult. The other is strategic: most PR objectives are still framed around awareness rather than pipeline or revenue contribution. According to Outcomes Rocket, increasing brand awareness remains the top PR objective for 66.3% of organisations. Reputation management follows at 39.4%. Attracting talent or partners is cited by 32.0%, and educating audiences by 31.4%.

AI visibility - specifically, improving how a brand appears in AI-generated search results and answer engines - is prioritised by only 17.1%. Direct support for go-to-market campaigns ranks last at 14.4%. The report frames this gap as one of the central tensions in the current state of PR: organisations say the function matters for revenue, but the objectives they set for it remain largely disconnected from that outcome.

Budget allocation: mid-range commitment, cautious growth

PR receives an average of 14% of total marketing budgets, according to the Outcomes Rocket data. The largest concentration (27.8% of organisations) allocates between 5% and 10% of marketing spend to PR, with 48.7% falling somewhere in the 5-20% range. Few organisations land outside those middle brackets in either direction.

Year-over-year budget growth is present but not aggressive. Nearly half (47.7%) report increased PR investment over the prior year. Most of those increases are incremental (39.8%) rather than significant (7.9%). The report characterises this as confidence without commitment - organisations believe in PR's strategic value but have not scaled budgets to match that belief.

AI-related investment within PR budgets shows a similar pattern. The largest single category in AI spending is no additional investment (21.4%), suggesting that many organisations are incorporating AI tools within existing budgets rather than creating new budget lines. Among those spending more, AI-powered content creation tools attract the largest share (18.5%). Workflow automation and campaign management tools follow at 13.3%, and media monitoring and sentiment analysis platforms at 12.6%. Data integration between PR, marketing, and sales systems receives 9.9% of the AI-related investment allocation.

Only 0.9% of organisations are actively reducing PR budgets due to AI efficiency gains.

Tactics: media relations still leads, digital PR now baseline

The tactical picture reflects the hybrid model that has taken hold across the industry. Media relations remains the dominant PR tactic, used by 66.7% of organisations surveyed. Brand and reputation management follows at 54.1%. These two categories represent the established core of most PR programmes.

What has changed is the range of activity sitting alongside that core. Digital PR has reached 52.7% adoption and, according to Outcomes Rocket, is now the baseline rather than a differentiator. Community engagement is at 47.7%. Thought leadership and content creation - directly relevant to AEO signal-building - is practised by 41.9%. News and press releases (40.6%) and events and sponsorships (39.9%) complete the middle tier.

More specialised credibility-building tactics remain less common. Influencer relations is adopted by 29.4%, crisis communication by 21.9%, and analyst relations by only 20.8%. The low figure for analyst relations is notable given the weight that enterprise AI systems tend to place on analyst coverage as a credibility signal. Research published in late 2025 showed that third-party publisher presence is one of the key variables AI systems use when evaluating brand discoverability.

AI governance in PR: adoption without guardrails

One of the more striking findings in the Outcomes Rocket report concerns the governance gap that has opened up as organisations adopt AI tools within PR workflows. According to the data, 21.4% of organisations have formal, documented, and enforced AI policies covering PR activities. That means fewer than one in four have clear internal guidelines. More than 70% lack fully formalised AI governance.

The breakdown is as follows: 27.7% operate with no formal guidance at all, 24.4% use informal guidelines, 19.6% are currently developing policies, and 6.9% are unsure of their own organisation's position.

The risks that PR professionals associate with AI adoption centre on three areas. Data privacy and regulation is the top concern at 40.1%, reflecting sensitivity around how AI tools process proprietary or regulated information. Accuracy and hallucination risks come next at 37.9% - a direct concern for PR functions where factual precision directly affects reputational credibility. Loss of brand voice authenticity is the third-ranked concern at 29.2%.

Despite those concerns, reported negative consequences from AI use in PR have so far been limited. 35.4% of respondents say AI has not yet caused major disruption. 23.3% have experienced minor content inaccuracies that were generally manageable. Only 6.6% report actual reputational or quality issues. But 28.8% say it is too early to tell - meaning a large segment of organisations has not yet accumulated enough experience to know whether their current AI usage is creating problems.

The two-year outlook: revenue pressure on PR

The forward-looking data in the report suggests that the strategic pressure on PR to demonstrate revenue impact will intensify. According to Outcomes Rocket, 84.1% of respondents believe PR will play a larger role in sales enablement and business outcomes within two years. And 73% expect the function to become more strategic as AI changes how information is discovered and consumed.

The trends respondents identify as most likely to shape PR over the next two years are led by AI-driven automation at 46.6%, followed by the growth of digital PR at 38.2%. AI-driven search changes requiring PR for visibility and authority are cited by 26.7%. Greater integration with marketing and sales is expected by 24.7%. Decline of traditional media is anticipated by 24.5%.

Stronger revenue accountability, which sits at 12.9%, ranks lower than most structural trends in the data. Yet it may be the variable that determines whether the elevated expectations around PR translate into sustained budget growth or a eventual retrenchment.

For marketing professionals tracking how AI search is changing brand economics, the Outcomes Rocket benchmark offers a detailed baseline. The fragmentation of AI search across multiple platforms - including Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others - has complicated how brands calculate the value of editorial coverage. Coverage that once primarily drove web traffic now also feeds the authority signals that AI systems use to evaluate source credibility. Measuring both effects simultaneously requires capabilities that most organisations have not yet built.

The resourcing picture shows where PR sits institutionally. Most organisations manage the function in-house, either with a dedicated PR team (35.9%) or through general marketing (34.9%). Only 8.4% rely exclusively on external agencies. The in-house dominance reflects PR's growing strategic importance - but it also means that the pressure to close measurement gaps falls primarily on internal teams that may lack the data infrastructure to do so.

According to Outcomes Rocket, the survey sample was drawn from a diverse mix of company sizes: 36.2% from organisations with 1-50 employees, 21.7% from the 51-200 range, and 12.6% from companies with over 5,000 employees. Nearly half of respondents (48.6%) represent organisations generating under $10M in annual revenue, while 25.3% come from the $10M-$50M range and a smaller share from companies exceeding $200M.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Marketing and PR professionals globally, surveyed by Outcomes Rocket. The sample covers 858 respondents across professional services, technology, ecommerce, education, financial services, manufacturing, and healthcare.

What: A benchmark report documenting how AI-driven search is changing PR strategy, budgets, and measurement. Key findings include: 44.8% of organisations have increased PR spending due to AI search; 72.5% are using PR to build AEO signals; only 13.1% share earned media with sales teams; and 70% lack formal AI governance for PR activities.

When: Survey data was collected in March 2026 via Prolific. The report was published by Outcomes Rocket in May 2026.

Where: The survey is global, drawing respondents across industries and company sizes, with representation from organisations generating under $10M to over $200M in annual revenue.

Why: AI-driven search has changed how audiences discover and trust information. Brands that earn credible third-party coverage are more likely to appear in AI-generated responses, creating a direct connection between PR activity and search visibility that did not exist in the same form under traditional SEO. The benchmark aims to quantify how far along organisations are in responding to that shift - and where the largest execution gaps remain.

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