For years, the marketing funnel had a familiar shape. Search captured intent; paid media bought attention; social facilitated conversation; and PR built reputation around it all.
AI is scrambling that model, and fast.
According to a recent INC. article citing Gartner research, earned media budgets are predicted to double by 2027 as AI changes how people find information, evaluate options and discover brands.
It’s a striking forecast, but for those of us in PR, the more interesting story is the why behind it.
As consumers increasingly ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and other AI tools what to buy, where to go, who to trust or how to solve a problem, the rules of brand discovery are changing. Instead of scrolling through ten blue links, or visiting a brand’s website, people can ask a question and receive a synthesized recommendation in seconds.
The intelligence informing that recommendation often comes from somewhere PR knows very well: what credible third parties are saying about you.
There’s a fascinating contradiction emerging in Canadian behaviour.
We’re using AI more, we’re searching with it, we’re asking it for product recommendations – but we don’t necessarily trust it.
The same 2026 IBM research found that while 45% of Canadians use AI during their shopping journey, only 19% trust AI recommendations outright.
In other words: we’re increasingly relying on AI for answers before we’ve fully decided whether we trust those answers.
When an AI platform answers a question about your company, your product or your category, it isn’t inventing your reputation from scratch. It’s combining an existing information ecosystem: your website and content, journalism, reviews, expert commentary, creator content, social posts, forum discussions and the broader digital footprint surrounding your brand.
In Canada, the shift is already visible.
According to CIRA’s 2026 Canadian Internet Trends Study, nearly half of Canadians (46%) used a generative AI tool or platform in the past year, up sharply from 33% in 2025 and just 16% in 2024.
But adoption is only part of the story. More than half (52%) of Canadian GenAI users now use AI as a search engine.
For decades, brands have fought to appear at the top of a list of search results. Now, consumers can simply ask a question and receive an immediate answer – including what to buy. Canadian research released by IBM in January 2026 found that 45% of Canadians use AI somewhere in their shopping journey, including 42% who use it for product research.
AI is starting to act less like a channel sending consumers downstream of a decision and more like something upstream – shaping which brands even make the shortlist.
That makes being represented accurately and credibly within those answers extraordinarily important.
PR has always been in the credibility business. Now, credibility is discoverability.
For years, brands have invested heavily in SEO to make sure they could be found. The rise of AI search adds a new consideration: brands increasingly need to make sure they can be understood, trusted and recommended.
Enter Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) – the practice of increasing a brand’s visibility within answers on AI platforms. But GEO doesn’t mean SEO is dead – far from it.
Search engines remain an important part of the information infrastructure behind AI, and strong owned content, technical authority and clear digital information still matter enormously. But optimizing a webpage is no longer the whole job.
Brands need to think beyond what they publish themselves and consider the wider body of information that exists about them online. Is it current, credible and consistent? And does it give both people and machines a clear understanding of what the brand stands for?
Put another way: GEO isn’t replacing SEO; it’s expanding search strategy into reputation strategy.
That’s the space we at Strategic Objectives have been working in for more than four decades: building the stories, relationships and third-party credibility that shape what people know and believe about brands.
Earned media is re-entering the chat
Traditionally, the value of a media hit was largely measured through its immediate reach: who saw the story, how many impressions it generated, whether it moved conversation or drove traffic.
AI potentially gives earned media a much longer tail.
A great story in a credible Canadian publication doesn’t disappear when the news cycle moves on. Neither does an expert interview, executive commentary or credible product review. They become part of the lasting digital footprint surrounding a brand.
A media placement isn’t only an impression anymore – it can become an input.
We saw this play out with STRONG Pilates. When the Australian boutique fitness brand entered Canada in 2024, our launch campaign generated 14.6+ million earned impressions and 155+ unique pieces of coverage – filling classes from day one and accelerating studio expansion.
But the surprise came in 2025: STRONG re-engaged us on an ongoing retainer specifically because those news articles kept working. Potential franchisees were searching the brand, and the third-party validation in local and national media materially increased credibility and conversion.
Today, we continue to layer in updated endorsements, expert reviews and fresh placements with the goal of helping STRONG show up not just in search results, but prominently in AI-generated answers when prospects ask, “Is STRONG Pilates legitimate?” or “What are the best new boutique fitness franchises in Canada?”
The journalism, commentary and conversations created today can influence the information environment AI systems encounter tomorrow. And that extends beyond traditional earned media.
Google’s generative AI search features can surface what’s being said about products and services across the web, including blogs, videos and forum discussions.
A thoughtful creator review, an organic Reddit conversation or a useful piece of social content can add another layer of third-party context about a brand: what it’s known for, who recommends it and whether its claims hold up beyond its owned channels.
Not every platform or piece of content is equally accessible to AI systems, so this isn’t about generating social noise for the sake of GEO. It’s about building credible, discoverable conversation in the places and among the people audiences already trust.
Whether that authority comes from a journalist, an expert, a creator or a community, the principle is the same: have something useful to say, show up consistently in credible places and give others a reason to talk about you.
The human paradox
Perhaps the most interesting thing about AI’s rise is that it makes the human side of communications more important, not less.
A June 2026 TD/Ipsos study of more than 2,500 Canadians found that 71% still trust human intelligence more than artificial intelligence.
Canadians aren’t rejecting AI – they’re drawing a line between efficiency and judgment. AI is extraordinarily good at helping us find, sort, synthesize and process information, and communicators should absolutely use it.
But trust is different. It’s built through judgment, relevance, empathy, creativity, experience, accountability and relationships between actual people.
AI can help a PR professional research a journalist, but it cannot build the relationship for them. It can analyze thousands of conversations, but it cannot instinctively understand the zeitgeist in quite the same way a person living inside it can. It can produce 100 pitches in seconds, but it cannot make an irrelevant story relevant.
And it can tell a brand what people are saying, but it cannot decide, on its own, what that brand should contribute to the conversation.
PR’s new role: Reputation for humans and machines
As the volume of content grows, knowing what’s actually worth saying – and who’s worth listening to – becomes more valuable.
That brings me back to Gartner’s prediction that earned media budgets could double by 2027. Whether or not that precise forecast comes to pass, the forces behind it are already visible here in Canada.
The information environment is changing, so the question for brands is changing too. It isn’t simply, “How high do we rank?” It’s:
- “What does the internet know about us – and who’s validating it?”
- “Do we have genuine authority in the conversations we want to own?”
- “Is our story consistent wherever people – or machines – encounter it?”
- And arguably most importantly: “When a Canadian asks an AI platform who to trust in our category, are we part of the answer?”
For PR, that’s a significant opportunity. At Strategic Objectives, we believe it demands a broader way of thinking about brand visibility.
Brands need to build reputations that are not only visible, but verifiable.
That means building credible signals around a brand: earned media that builds authority, owned content that backs it up, social and creator conversations that add context, executives who are actually worth quoting, and real experiences people want to talk about in the first place. The right mix will look different for every brand.
We see it across our own client work – from translating Amazon Devices and Services’ generative AI into stories relevant to Canadians, to building Kia’s cultural footprint beyond the vehicle; reinforcing Canadian beauty authority for Watier and Marcelle across media, influencers and experts; and turning unfamiliar names like STRONG Pilates into brands people recognize and want to experience.
It also means using AI intelligently: to understand emerging conversations, identify gaps in a brand’s digital footprint, see how brands and competitors are represented across AI platforms, and surface new opportunities for authority – without outsourcing the judgment, creativity and relationships that make great communications work.
GEO shouldn’t be another box for brands to tick – it should be a new lens on reputation. The irony of the AI era may be that as technology makes it easier than ever to produce more content, authentic reputation, trusted relationships and human judgment become more valuable. Our PR tools are changing – the fundamentals aren’t.
The goal is to build a reputation strong enough that when AI goes looking for answers, the evidence speaks for itself.
Sadie Tory is vice president at Strategic Objectives, where she advises brands and business leaders on reputation, brand strategy and integrated communications. Her work focuses on helping organizations earn attention and trust in a rapidly changing media and cultural landscape – including how AI is reshaping brand discovery, influence and the role of PR.