As the sprawling public relations industry scrambles to figure out how to buffer its clients’ brands and reputations through the new medium of artificial intelligence chatbots, some firms have reached a surprising conclusion: The best way to get your client’s message into the output of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and the rest is by talking to journalists.
Firms, whose services now often include regularly testing clients’ reputations with AI models, are finding that authoritative publications — including declining local news outlets and specialist trade journals — shape the results of chatbot queries about a given company far more powerfully than a social media campaign or Reddit thread could. The result is a striking reversal of the status quo at a moment when PR executives had begun to enjoy the social media-era option of ignoring journalists entirely.
“Earned media still matters, but not the way people think,” said Carreen Winters, who leads the reputation practice at MikeWorldWide, using the trade term for independent reporting.
The firm is launching a service this week called “PreBunk” that’s designed, according to a draft press release shared with Semafor, to provide an “ongoing proactive ‘education’ of the LLMs about your company and its reputation.”
Consumers, according to Winters, say, “I’m not going to trust earned media — I’m going to trust the internet.” But these LLMs’ sources lead back to journalism, something she said can sometimes be a hard sell to executives who thought they no longer had to deal with pesky reporters.
“Sometimes it’s a small trade publication that your client has said, ‘Nobody reads that anymore,‘” she said. “Sometimes it’s a hometown newspaper.”
Other firms are reaching similar conclusions. “Earned media and owned content [that is, pages on a company’s own website] are the primary drivers of how GenAI platforms recommend and describe brands and products. It’s not even close,” said Brian Buchwald, who leads Edelman’s global product, data and AI strategy. He said the firm carefully tracks the sources of LLM answers, which vary widely based on industry and brand. LLMs’ assessments of an enterprise tech company’s reputation, for instance, drew from Wall Street Journal coverage and research reports from Gartner.
“You can make a big difference very quickly with the right content and campaign choices and who writes about it,” he said.
Rand Fishkin, the founder of the audience research firm SparkToro, wrote last year that, for instance, LLMs appear to rely heavily on professional review sites like Eater when recommending restaurants. For brands looking to stand out, “that’s gonna be a PR process and a pitch process, but is it worthwhile? Absolutely,” he wrote.
He recently headlined another post: “Unpopular Opinion: Public Relations is the Future of Marketing.”
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The PR industry is navigating the rise of AI in parallel with the overlapping but more technical SEO trade, which is adjusting its sights from bringing clients’ websites up search results to elevating them in AI excerpts on Google and elsewhere. One place they converge is in encouraging companies to add pages to their website aimed at LLM, not human, consumers.
The SEO professionals are finding, however, that for now AI is largely relying on the same rankings that search engines use — though sometimes in unpredictable ways. A brief from the enterprise SEO marketing company BrightEdge, for instance, cites as “one of the most important discoveries” about Anthropic’s Claude the fact that it relies on the lesser-used search engine Brave for its rankings; companies will need to ensure they’re being indexed by Brave to feed their official line to Claude. Another brief wrestles with the subtle differences between Google’s AI Overviews and more traditional search rankings, with the LLMs answering “anticipated questions,” not just the ones consumers are asking.
The SEO field has long been engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse with Google and other search products, and spokespeople for LLM companies didn’t respond to inquiries about how they view these efforts.
Ben’s view
There’s something heartening, from the perspective of the humans in the media business, about the practice of gaming digital media becoming less technical, after a long march in which advertising and marketing were essentially swallowed by adtech and practices like SEO.
Dealing with LLMs is “more like traditional PR than it is like SEO,” Ben Worthen, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who founded the agency Message Lab, told me.
That’s good news, in particular, for the PR industry, which gainfully employs its share of human beings, as well as some former journalists.
But even if the LLMs find this kind of authoritative journalism valuable, and even if companies will pay to employ publicists to pitch their stories, it’s not clear where that process meets news organizations’ business models.
For instance: What, exactly, is a trade publication that offers valuable and authoritative service to LLMs even as humans stop reading it? A research service for AI? If the handful of firms training and maintaining LLMs really think that the authoritative reporting on small industries or local areas is valuable, they may have to pay for it — becuase nobody else seems to want to.
Room for Disagreement
The darkest warnings about the power of AI have to do with the “liar’s dividend” that renders accurate journalism pointless. The theory is not that deepfakes will persuade people to believe anything in particular, but that they’ll make people disbelieve everything. Bobby Chesney and Danielle Citron coined the term in a 2019 essay arguing that “a skeptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence. This skepticism can be invoked just as well against authentic as against adulterated content.”
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AI relies on original journalism, a Brookings Institution report argued: “Without access to human-created, high-quality content that is a relatively accurate portrayal of reality — and that journalism provides — the foundational models that fuel machine learning and generative AI applications of all types will malfunction, degrade, and potentially even collapse, putting the entire system at risk.”
Or, as Joshua Rothman put it in a relatively optimistic New Yorker essay, “A.I. could improve the news — if it doesn’t destroy it in the process.”
The AI effect on search is here, as searches in Safari recently fell for the first time ever, according to an Apple executive.
Amazon hopes to get more marketers stuck on one of the most popular commercial formats in streaming: pause ads.
The company said Monday it would introduce artificial intelligence to help generate “pause ads” that can play off whatever program the viewer is watching. Imagine, for example, if someone watching a sad moment during a romantic comedy stopped the action and encountered an on-screen message for eye drops or tissues, or if a viewer in the middle of watching a high-speed car chase halted the stream and encountered a promotion from the manufacturer behind one of the vehicles.
Amazon intends to build the new commercials using A.I. that can understand immediately what kind of show or movie is being watched and what attributes pertain to any scene on screen. The technology creates a “contextual advertising experience that dynamically aligns the ad message with the content viewers are watching – creating a natural and relevant connection,” says Alan Moss, Amazon’s vice president of global ad sales, in a statement. The hope is that subscribers will see the new pause-screen pitches as “extensions of the entertainment experience, not interruptions.”
Amazon declined to make executives available to elaborate on the concept.
Streamers have experimented with pause ads since 2018, with Hulu enlisting Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble to test a new commercial format that places promotions on screen whenever a user decides to halt the stream of a specific programming selection. The commercials represent a new way to get advertising in front of a consumer base that has grown weary of traditional commercial breaks, particularly because streaming services do not run as many pitches as linear TV.
Streaming executives see pauses as natural interruptions in the viewing experience, and are betting viewers won’t be upset by commercials that pop up on screen. Amazon in 2024 raided Disney to hire Jeremy Helfand, who helped launch pause ads at Hulu.
Many recent pause ads try to play off the decision to halt streaming a show. “Need a break?” asked one on-screen graphic from Procter & Gamble’s Charmin during a stop. The toilet paper’s colorful bear mascot then made an appearance. “Enjoy the go.” There are other ads with similar themes. One recent on-screen entreaty for Hershey’s Kit Kat showed one of the candy bars in pieces and said, “Have a break.” One from Berskhire Hathaway’s Geico told viewers to “Hold the phone.”
Different streaming services have tested the boundaries of what pause ads might do. Some keep the ad translucent and restrict how much of a screen is devoted to it. Others let the ad take up a full screen. As technology develops, there is hope the pause ads might move from being static to employing motion or animation. Some feature QR codes that can give users a chance to learn more details about a particular product or service.
Amazon’s new experiment may give pausing a new kick. Most of the current pause ads employ standard messaging that refers to the act of stopping, not the program or genre being watched.
There could be some awkward moments, too. What if Amazon’s A.I. comes up with something incorrect or offensive? Such a moment would grind use of the pause to a full stop.
Barbra Sainsurin has been promoted to chief marketing officer at Anthropologie Group.
Sainsurin was previously the Philadelphia-based lifestyle brand’s executive director of digital and brand marketing.
She succeeds Elizabeth Preis, who has been with the company since December 2019.
Tricia Smith, Anthropologie’s global CEO, announced the promotion on LinkedIn Tuesday, saying, “Over the past several years, Barbra has been a driving force within our marketing team—bringing deep expertise in integrated and performance marketing, paired with a sharp understanding of our customer and their evolving mindset.”
She added, “Her creativity, vision, and strategic leadership make her uniquely suited to lead us into our next chapter.”
“After five years in various marketing leadership roles, I’m humbled to now lead a brand that continues to inspire me—and so many others,” Sainsurin said in a LinkedIn post. “Our mission to build brand love through unexpected and exciting experiences remains at the heart of everything we do, and I’m energized by the opportunity to continue that work with this extraordinary team.”
As executive director, brand and digital marketing, Sainsurin was responsible for all digital marketing and technology, site experience and design, analytics, affiliate marketing, paid social, brand partnerships, influencer marketing, and social media across North America for Anthropologie, AnthroLiving, Anthropologie Weddings, and Terrain.
Her previous stops include Under Armour, where she was the senior director of global personalization responsible for consumer engagement, global marketing innovation, and performance marketing.
Sainsurin has also worked at American Express, Ogilvy, MTV Networks, Gannett, and Marriott.
PepsiCo said Monday that it is buying prebiotic soda brand Poppi for nearly $2 billion.
While soda consumption has broadly fallen over the past two decades in the U.S., prebiotic sodas, fueled by industry newcomers Poppi and Olipop, have won over health-conscious consumers over the past five years.
The category’s growth makes it attractive for Pepsi and its rival, Coca-Cola, which recently launched its own prebiotic soda brand, Simply Pop. Pepsi had reportedly aimed to launch its own functional soda under its Soulboost brand, but it canceled those plans, likely paving the way to a deal with Poppi.
Pepsi said it plans to acquire the upstart Poppi for $1.95 billion. The deal includes $300 million of anticipated cash tax benefits, making the net purchase price $1.65 billion.
Pepsi will also have to make additional payments if Poppi achieves certain performance milestones within a set time frame after the acquisition closes. The company did not say when the deal is expected to close, pending regulatory approval.
Poppi’s founders Allison and Stephen Ellsworth launched the brand back in 2018, the same year that Olipop was founded. Poppi’s formula includes apple cider vinegar, prebiotics and just five grams of sugar.
By 2023, Poppi’s annual sales reportedly crossed $100 million.
The company recently made its second straight Super Bowl appearance with an ad during the big game, demonstrating both its deep pockets and a desire to reach an even wider audience.
But as Poppi’s sales have grown, it has also attracted backlash for its health claims. For example, the company faced a class action lawsuit that alleged that its drinks were not as healthy as its packaging claimed. Poppi and the plaintiff moved to settle the suit on Friday for $8.9 million, according to court filings.
For its part, rival Olipop was valued at $1.85 billion during its latest funding round, which was announced in February. In 2023, Olipop founder and CEO Ben Goodwin told CNBC that soda giants PepsiCo and Coca-Cola had already come knocking about a potential sale.
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Microsoft is blurring the line between search and shopping with new AI-powered ads in its generative AI chatbot, Copilot.
It unveiled several AI ad formats and tools today at its Advertising Accelerate event in the Dominican Republic, including Showroom Ads, an interactive split-screen experience that mimics in-store guidance, and branded AI agents that let brands engage directly in Copilot responses. It also introduced an “ad voice” feature to explain why certain ads appear in response to queries. Currently, Copilot ads are live in English, French, and German, with Spanish and Japanese set to launch this month.
“Copilot ads experience [is a] critical component of how we’re going to evolve our business,” Paul Longo, general manager, AI in Ads, Microsoft Advertising, told ADWEEK.
For advertisers, the shift in search represents both an opportunity and a challenge: the chance to speak to people more conversationally—but also the need to rethink traditional search-driven ad strategies.
At least 10 commercials to air during Super Bowl LIX on Fox have sold for $8 million, according to multiple reports Wednesday.
Fox reported in November that it had sold out of ad spots, at what it said it believed to be “record pricing,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said at the time. As spots were dwindling, the price increased, according to reports. Super Bowl ads normally increase by about $100,000 each year, but this year, the increase was reportedly closer to $500,000.
“What was unique to this Super Bowl, or this marketplace, was we had a lot more people that weren’t in the game at all, all of a sudden be like, no, no, I have to get in the game,” Fox Sports EVP/ad sales Mark Evans said.
Around 123.7 million people watched the Super Bowl last year, according to Nielsen, and more than 115 million viewers watched in 2023, the last time the Super Bowl aired on Fox.
Anheuser-Busch, Meta, PepsiCo, Frito-Lay, Taco Bell, Uber Eats and others will vie to win over the more than 120 million viewers expected to tune in for the broadcast on Fox and via the free livestream on Tubi.
“If I learned anything, it’s that we’re in a period now where the live sporting event, where people and families come together to watch, is that much more coveted,” Evans said. “There’s an escalation in price and interest in the demand for live sports, but we’re not at its peak. We’ve still got runway for growth.”
Fox declined to comment on the specific price tag for 30 seconds. Last year, a 30-second spot went for around a reported $7 million.
Evans said the mix of ad categories for the most part includes the usual suspects: beverages, snacks, tech companies and telcos. There will be a focus on AI in more commercials, he said, and slightly more pharmaceutical companies advertising this year.
One category that’s down is movie promos and streamers. Another traditionally big category for the Super Bowl, automakers, are mainly sitting it out after a tough year in the sector, with only Stellantis’ Jeep and Ram brands having announced an appearance.
The California wildfires in January made the lead-up to the game less predictable than usual. State Farm pulled out of its planned advertising to focus on the fires. And some other advertisers faced production delays. But Evans said accommodations were made wherever possible.
Advertisers are expected to begin releasing their ads in the days ahead of the game. One of the first ads to debut was an ad for Budweiser, featuring a Clydesdale foal that helps make a beer delivery.
Another Anheuser-Busch brand, Michelob Ultra, also released its ad, which shows Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara as pickleball hustlers.
Hellmann’s ad brings Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal back together for a reprise of the Katz’s Deli scene in “When Harry Met Sally.”
Teasers have abounded this year, from an Uber Eats teaser starring Charli XCX and Martha Stewart to Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt touting Meta’s Smart Glasses.
Super Bowl LIX will be played at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Feb. 9, when the Philadelphia Eagles will face the Kansas City Chiefs.
X integrates Grok into ads to help advertisers generate ads and get real-time campaign performance insights.
X launched two new features to help advertisers automate ad creation and analyze real-time ad campaign performance. The new features – Prefill with Grok and Analyze Campaign with Grok – are (as the names imply) powered by Grok, X’s AI assistant.
Prefill with Grok. Enter your website URL and Grok will generate ad copy, imagery, and a call-to-action headline. You can tweak as needed. Here’s what it looks like:
Analyze Campaign with Grok. Grok will analyze campaign data and offer insights and recommendations to optimize targeting and creative strategy.
What’s next. The rollout began Feb. 21. It will continue in phases, expanding to more advertisers.
Why we care. This move aims to streamline the ad creation process and make data-driven optimizations faster, cutting down on manual effort and potentially boosting campaign performance.
