By: Gabby Sobieski
For years, the marketing budget conversation went one way. Paid media got the spotlight and spend while PR got whatever was left over. But now the tables are turning.
Gartner is predicting that earned media budgets will double by 2027. The driver is the same shift you’ve watched reshape your funnel: AI search has become one of the primary ways buyers find brands, and AI visibility runs on earned media.
The shift to AI focused efforts is already here
This behavior shift isn’t coming soon, it’s already here. ChatGPT traffic more than doubled year over year, and its weekly active users tripled between late 2024 and early 2026, according to Similarweb. Google traffic slipped in the same window. Buyers are skipping the ten blue links and trusting whatever short list AI hands them.
And they show up ready to buy. Similarweb clocks the conversion rate for ChatGPT-referred visits at 11.4%, more than double the 5.3% from organic search. An AI referral lands like a recommendation, and people act on recommendations.
Here’s the part that should reframe your budget: a spot on that short list isn’t for sale. Muck Rack found that roughly 94% of the links AI cites come from non-paid sources, and half of those citations pull from content published in the last 11 months. You have to earn your way into the answer.
We’ve been saying this, now Gartner is too.
None of this surprises anyone who read our research with Pavilion. When we surveyed 606 GTM leaders on how they’re adapting to AI search, the teams already putting money into PR were pulling ahead. They were 107% more likely than average to report meaningful lead volume traceable to AI search. Nearly half of all marketers (46%) said they’re already seeing qualified leads they can trace back to AI.
Those wins came from teams that moved early, before the budget line item told them to.
The Money’s Just Catching Up
Gartner’s forecast reads less like a prediction and more like a description of catch-up. Buyers already changed how they discover brands. The dollars are now being rearranged to match. So the real question for 2026 isn’t whether your PR budget grows. It’s whether you start spending like an early mover or wait until the increase becomes inevitable and your competitors have a two-year head start on citations.
AI search rewards brands with a documented, credible presence across the web, and that footprint takes time to build. The teams seeding earned coverage, analyst notes, and third-party validation today are the ones AI will surface when your buyer asks for a short list next quarter.
Your competitors will all get this budget bump eventually, but the teams who win will be those that started building their AI presence early.
Ready to spend ahead of the curve instead of behind it? Connect with Kickstand and let’s build a PR program engineered for how buyers actually find you.