Which media outlets the AI engines actually trust.
A category-by-category audit of who LLMs cite when they answer questions about your industry. Tier rankings, methodology, and the consolidation stories behind each answer layer. New issue every two weeks.
The answer-engine era did not flatten the media landscape. It consolidated it. In every consumer category we examine, the publications LLMs cite when they answer a question turn out to be owned by a smaller set of holding companies than the print-era list ever was.
Each issue of this series ranks the outlets that matter most for AI citation in one category — the Tier 1 properties that determine which brands AI engines recommend, the rising and falling tiers below them, and the consolidation story behind the structure.
The series runs every two weeks. By September 2026, EPR will have published the only complete catalog of who AI cites in nine consumer categories where no one else is keeping score.
The 2026 Run
Pet
"Three holding companies — Chewy, Mars Petcare, People Inc. — own the editorial properties that produce most of the citations LLMs return on pet queries."
Video Games
"Two companies — Ziff Davis and Fandom — own the reviews, the aggregator, and the wikis the AI engines were trained on. One closed loop."
Aging & Longevity
"Longevity's answer layer was built in 18 months and is run by three men with podcasts. No legacy magazine cracks Tier 1."
Menopause & Women's Health
"A category that didn't have an answer layer five years ago now has one — and it's owned by venture-backed clinics."
Mental Health & Therapy
"Two for-profit teletherapy platforms produce more LLM-cited mental health content than every clinical authority combined."
Cannabis
"The only consumer vertical where trade media outranks consumer publications in AI citation share."
EV & Electric Vehicles
"Reddit citations on EV ownership questions exceed every legacy auto publication combined."
Pickleball
"Pickleball's answer layer doesn't exist yet. A category where a smart media play could own it in 18 months."
Watches & Horology
"Hodinkee dominates watch answers across every engine — even after the brand's well-documented business turbulence."
By Issue 09, EPR will have shown the same thing nine times in nine categories: the consumer answer layer is owned by 3–5 holding companies, most assembled between 2017 and 2024.
The print-era media list and the AI-citation list are not the same list. The companies that bought distribution between 2017 and 2024 — Dotdash/People Inc., Red Ventures, Mars Petcare, Chewy, Future plc, Ziff Davis, Fandom, Valnet, and a handful of others — now own retrieval. This series catalogs the consequence.
