PR in the Era of Clickless Search
- Rebecca West
- Sep 26
- 4 min read
Spoiler alert: earned media is back, baby…..
For the last two decades, we’ve been hearing a lot about the waning importance and influence of traditional media. By this point, we’re all pretty familiar with the reasons given for this phenomenon:
The implosion of the ad-based business model, combined with a failure to secure subscriptions
Mistrust of content – or the desire to encounter content that echoes the inherent biases and views of the readers
Ultimately, regardless of the specific combination of factors, we’ve arrived at a moment where many traditional media outlets are struggling to stay afloat in the midst of a sea of misinformation. Looking out at the perfect storm of corporate greed, governmental corruption, and reader apathy, it’s easy to become a pessimistic hand-wringer about the future of the internet. Just as we’ve seen with other major issues (e.g., climate change), where it appears that we have clearly passed the point of no return, the Internet seems to have already been so flooded with AI-generated garbage that it can no longer be viewed as a viable source of information. But is it really too late to save it?
Enter AI-Powered Search Summaries
If we really look carefully at the series of events that have led us to this point, it’s impossible to ignore the overwhelming level of market control enjoyed by a very small handful of browser-based search engines. Google, for example, holds a significantly dominant position in the search engine market, consistently maintaining a market share hovering around 90% globally, raising understandable concerns about potential anti-competitive practices.
Google Chrome, along with a very small set of others (e.g., Safari, Edge) has essentially dominated everything that has been fed to us for decades. Some of us felt the food was pretty good, so we didn’t object to the limitations of the menu. Others were clamoring for more choice, to the point that they were willing to go dumpster diving for other alternatives. In both cases, most of us were willing to ignore the inconvenient truth that everything we were being fed was being paid for by advertising and SEO.
Now, we are starting to see AI summaries generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI’s Claude, Google Gemini and Perplexity. These services have been trained to act as personal assistants, not just link-return mechanisms.
AI-generated are not meant to merely summarize facts – they are geared toward shaping opinions, either due to biases in the training data or as an intentional attempt to personalize the information they are delivering.
As browsers start to incorporate lengthy AI summaries rather than a mere listing of relevant links, we are seeing a shift toward longer form conversational queries, rather than keyword terms and ads. In fact, AI overviews are becoming so detailed and complete, the reader doesn’t even need to click-through at all – leading to precipitously sharp declines in traffic for many brands (even more reason for despair, right?) But, wait – here’s the thing: traffic is definitely down, but the quality of the traffic may be going up.
We thought this argument about earned vs. paid was put to bed years ago, but guess what – here it comes again! Because, as we operate in the era of clickless search, we are moving back to a situation where earned media is once again being recognized as a critical part of the mix. One of the main reasons for this is because earned media focuses on building reputation, authority, and trust – three elements that are prioritized by many AI systems that take into account the credibility of the sources they are citing. Another reason is that AI summaries are structured to include diverse data, combining quotes from third parties, guest articles, and other viable sources of information, rather than just pointing to corporate websites and social media fodder.
Some sources say that AI-based tools have already started to suppress paid media and advertising, as their algorithms recognize it as less valuable than other forms of organic content.
Higher credibility | Immediate reach and visibility |
Builds stronger connection with audience via authenticity and transparency | More control over the messaging and timing |
Sustainable ROI in the form of both quantitative and qualitative measurements | Purely quantitative results are easily trackable for quick ROI analysis |
Improved SEO from high-quality backlinks and organic sharing | Best for brands that have large budgets |
Enhanced long-term brand reputation | Effective at delivering short-term campaign results |
Does anyone still read traditional media?
The TL;DR answer: Yes, they do! Especially when 3rd party traditional media sources are included in an AI overview. Although it’s true that physical print circulation has declined, many news organizations report substantial growth in their digital subscriptions. And let’s face it – even with declining readership, a lot of these media outlets still have UVMs that vastly exceed the audience size of the typical start up blog.
That said, it’s not really an either/or – it’s a win-win. PR and paid search have always had a reciprocal relationship with paid search. In order to have quality SEO results, you need quality content. Search engines are still trained to recognize high-quality backlinks, and paid search is still necessary to amplify the visibility of earned media placements and reach a broader audience.
If done right, this becomes a virtuous cycle, in which stronger search rankings lead to more media opportunities, resulting in more placements and better SEO.
So, there you have it – the infinite loop of earned and paid media in the age of AI.
Ready to optimize your earned media strategy? Let’s talk Helium Communications
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