For years the headlines screamed, “Is the press release dead?” and people eventually got bored of even asking the question as the classic PR format seemingly faded into obscurity.
I remember writing a blog in 2010, early in my tenure at PRWeek, outlining the trend for public companies toying with not bothering to release their reports on reputable wire services and instead favoring their own corporate websites, social media, videos and other outlets.
But a few high-profile snafus when info was released early by accident or technical difficulties drove IR teams back to the tried and tested environment of the wire service, if only as a basic insurance policy.
Now, the headlines are more about the press release returning with a vengeance, fueled by AI, and the newswires are launching products to optimize this. PR Newswire this week launched Amplify, billed as an AI platform that accelerates PR and communications capabilities.
Erik Carlson, CEO of PR and IR platform Notified, which owns GlobeNewswire, attributes the renaissance of the press release to a requirement for pull-through of trusted sources, high domain authority and large language model (LLM) prioritization. The demonstrable citation data used by the AI models enables the measurable impact of PR from campaigns, of which the press release is one channel.
As regular LinkedIn poster Sarah Evans from Zen Media says, the press release has evolved from just being a distribution channel and has added an “afterlife,” turning it into a “generative AI visibility engine.” Evans notes that it moves the release from a one-off media relations hit to an evergreen digital breadcrumb, citation or backlink that echoes long after the news cycle ends and fulfills the need for trusted sources the LLMs pull information from.
A survey in June about where AI gets its facts, from software platform Semrush based on a study of 150,000 citations, named the top domains cited by LLMs such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. Somewhat surprisingly, Reddit came in a clear No. 1, with AI models citing it 40.1% of the time. Wikipedia was second, at 26.3%, followed by YouTube at 23.5% and Google at 23.3%.
In the agency space, many firms are helping their clients with new search strategies for this GEO (generative engine optimization) era, including most of the large holding company shops as well as small and medium-sized agencies building bespoke dashboards and systems for their clients.
Brands and corporations should pay close attention to their owned media and websites, use FAQs in all their public materials, monitor and maximize their Wikipedia presences and get their press release strategy back on track and working harder than ever.
The press release is not dead. It has risen!
