Gartner Predicts a 2x Increase in PR and Earned Media Budgets by 2027 — Because AI Engines Cite Earned, Not Paid
Gartner has put a number on a shift the communications industry has been feeling for years. By 2027, the firm expects PR and earned media budgets to double as brands adjust to a discovery environment increasingly shaped by AI-generated answers rather than traditional search.
The implication is bigger than budget allocation. It changes what communications work is expected to do — and where the money to do it comes from. The forecast headlines Gartner's Top Predictions to Inform 2026 Comms Strategies, and it is the clearest signal yet from a major analyst house that influence now lives inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
The data underneath it is not subtle. According to a vendor study Gartner cites, more than 95% of links cited by AI search engines are nonpaid — mentions and coverage — with 27% originating directly from earned media. Paid placement, the dominant currency of the last two decades of digital marketing, barely registers. The visibility these engines reward is not bought. It is earned, structured, authoritative — and measurable.
The traffic has already moved
The behavioral shift behind Gartner's forecast is happening now, not in some speculative future. Between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, ChatGPT traffic grew 608% year-over-year and Perplexity grew 262%. Over the same window, Google and Bing each trended down roughly 1%. The legacy engines still hold the raw traffic advantage — but the direction of travel is unambiguous, and the curve is steep.
When buyers move their questions from a search bar to a conversational engine, they stop scanning ten blue links and start receiving one synthesized answer. That answer is assembled from sources the engine deems authoritative. Whoever is cited wins the consideration set. Whoever is absent does not exist.
Gartner calls the discipline answer engine optimization, or AEO. The working term across the communications industry — and the one that captures the offensive, content-and-coverage-driven nature of the work — is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). The label matters less than the metric underneath it: Citation Share, the percentage of relevant AI answers in which a brand appears.
What AI engines actually cite
Gartner is specific about the makeup of sources these answers pull from, and it is a roster that rewards editorial authority over promotional spend. The third-party sources cited are typically high-domain news outlets, government and NGO content, encyclopedic content, and academic research. The mix varies by industry — but the pattern holds across all of them.
And there is a finding inside the finding that should reshape how communications teams allocate effort. Press releases tend to get the fewest citations. When a query implies recency — a question about a company's most recent position on, say, sustainability — nearly half of all citations, 49%, come from news coverage. Recent, earned, third-party coverage is what these engines reach for when the question is current. The wire release is not.
That reframes the press release from a primary tool to a supporting one, and it elevates ongoing earned media from a brand-building nicety to a retrieval requirement. If an engine cannot find recent, credible, third-party coverage of your position, it will surface someone else's — or it will surface nothing, which in this environment is the same outcome.
Why this is a Communications problem, not a marketing one
Gartner draws a line the industry needs to internalize. Traditional SEO is best served by marketing. But the growing demand for visibility inside AI answers requires Communications-specific skills — because the work is about balancing stakeholder trust against platform requirements, and that is the native competency of the communications function, not the performance-marketing team.
The reason is structural. These engines reward authority, accuracy, and consistency across a wide base of credible third-party sources. Building that base is earned-media work: relationships with influential outlets, a responsive and proactive media function, the ability to meet the recency demands of AI search during exactly the moments that matter most — crises, issue management, mergers, acquisitions, leadership transitions. These are communications disciplines. They do not live in a bid-management dashboard.
Gartner's own recommendations make the point. Audit the engines your stakeholders actually use. Benchmark the sources cited in answers to the questions your buyers ask, and assess how well your narrative comes through. Reallocate budget from paid toward owned and earned. Build a responsive earned-media function tuned to recency. Establish measurement and benchmarking protocols for tracking earned coverage against AEO performance — including competitive and industry tracking. Upskill the team on how AI engines source and evaluate content.
Every one of those is a measurement-and-coverage instruction. None of them is a media-buying instruction.
The budget math
The reallocation Gartner describes is not additive for most organizations — it is a trade. The most logical source of the new PR and earned-media money is the existing paid budget, which means the shift requires a clear point of view on measurement and on the audience behaviors the spend is meant to change. Late-2024 data already showed CCOs leaning this way: public relations was the single most likely budget line to grow, with 36% of CCOs anticipating an increase, ahead of corporate brand at 34%, public website at 26%, and external social at 23%.
In other words, the 2027 prediction is not a reversal of where communications leaders are headed. It is an acceleration of a reallocation that has already started — pulled forward by the speed at which buyers are migrating to these tools.
What to do about it now
The organizations that will own their categories inside AI answers are the ones building the measurement and earned-media infrastructure before the shift fully arrives — not the ones scrambling to retrofit visibility after a competitor has already become the default answer.
That means three moves, in order. First, measure: benchmark your current Citation Share across the engines your buyers use, and identify the queries where you are absent. Second, build: stand up a proactive, recency-tuned earned-media function that produces the structured, authoritative, third-party coverage these engines reach for. Third, track: establish ongoing benchmarking against competitors so the function can be managed as a measurable contributor to enterprise visibility, not an unaccountable cost center.
Gartner has now told the market what the communications industry has been arguing for two years: the answer engine is the new front door, earned coverage is the key, and the budgets are about to double. The question is no longer whether the shift is real. It is whether your brand is the answer — or the absence.
This is one half of a larger picture. For the other half — the paid-media services category being optimized even as buyers migrate away from it — see our companion analysis: Forrester Just Mapped 35 Media Management Providers — and None of Them Are Built for the Answer Engine. Related coverage: AI Visibility, Earned Media, and the Everything-PR Research Hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Gartner predict about PR and earned media budgets?
Gartner predicts that by 2027, mass adoption of public LLMs as a replacement for traditional search will drive a 2x increase in PR and earned media budgets. The prediction headlines Gartner's top communications predictions for 2026.
Why do AI engines favor earned media over paid advertising?
AI answer engines assemble responses from sources they deem authoritative — typically high-domain news outlets, government and NGO content, encyclopedic content, and academic research. According to a vendor study cited by Gartner, more than 95% of links cited by AI search engines are nonpaid, with 27% coming directly from earned media. Paid placements are rarely cited.
How much has AI search traffic grown?
Between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, ChatGPT traffic grew 608% year-over-year and Perplexity grew 262%, while Google and Bing each trended down roughly 1%, per Gartner.
Do press releases get cited by AI engines?
According to Gartner, press releases tend to receive the fewest citations from AI answer engines. When a query implies recency, nearly half — 49% — of citations come from news coverage, underscoring the importance of ongoing earned media.
What is Citation Share?
Citation Share is the percentage of relevant AI-generated answers in which a brand is cited or mentioned across engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. It is emerging as the core visibility metric of the answer-engine era — the equivalent of market share for AI-mediated buyer research.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
Gartner uses the term answer engine optimization (AEO) to describe building visibility inside AI answers. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the broader, widely used industry term for the same discipline — earning, structuring, and measuring the content and coverage that AI engines cite.
