As seen in Fast Company.
Recently I was in several CMO meetings. The same stat came up each time. By the time we’d talked it through, the conversation had shifted from PR strategy to something much bigger.
According to Muck Rack’s “What Is AI Reading?” report, which analyzed more than one million links cited by leading AI models, there’s only a 2% overlap between the companies PR teams pitch and the companies AI actually cites.
CMOs weren’t surprised by the number. They were stopped by the question underneath it. The one their CEO has already asked in the last 90 days: “Does our brand show up when buyers ask who the leaders are in our space?”
Most marketing leaders I talk to are testing tools, sitting through demos, and walking away with more hype than answers. They do not lack effort. They lack a unifying scorecard that’s the whole enchilada, not another tool selling them a sliver of the AI brand picture.
Here’s what I see working with B2B tech companies. The CMOs getting ahead of it aren’t asking “are we showing up?” They’re asking how? That distinction is everything.
PRESENCE IS NOT AUTHORITY
Every vendor selling visibility right now is selling a slice of the picture. Each measures whether your brand shows up at all, as if appearance alone is the goal. But how you show up relative to the competition? That’s a different area to influence. And that’s the one most CMOs aren’t measuring yet.
The most damaging thing I see when we audit a brand isn’t absence. It’s showing up in the wrong context, with a narrative their competitor has already claimed. You’ve spent 18 months building content and earning coverage, and a competitor is now the authoritative voice in the conversation you thought you owned.
That’s not a visibility problem. That’s an authority problem. No amount of additional content production fixes it.
WHAT DRIVES THE RECOMMENDATION
Gartner’s “Predicts 2026: Top Predictions to Inform 2026 Comms Strategies” found that chief communications officers spend just 2.9% of their budgets on measurement and monitoring, well behind marketing’s 8%. They’ve been measuring what’s easy to count, not what actually moves the needle.
The Muck Rack report found that 94% of all citations come from nonpaid sources; earned media accounts for 82% of citations. The signals that drive recommendations have almost nothing in common with traditional SEO or paid media metrics. And yet most comms budgets are built around those metrics.
What drives brand authority is third-party credibility built over time across seven dimensions.
1. Earned media depth and recency: Coverage in the publications and newsletters where your buyers actually live. A trade feature that lets your SMEs go deep will outperform a passing mention in national media every time. Chasing logos means building visibility in a channel that doesn’t count.
2. Executive and leadership visibility: Whether your CEO has a point of view showing up consistently across third-party speaking engagements, expert media commentary, and owned content. A CEO never quoted in a relevant publication or never on a stage they didn’t own, doesn’t exist in that evaluation. Speaking at your own customer conference isn’t third-party validation. It’s a room you invited yourself into.
3. Review platform health: The one signal that can’t be bought, gamed, or manufactured. When a customer rates you publicly on a respected review platform, that carries different weight than anything your marketing team produces. A customer interviewed by a reporter who sought them out is a different category of credibility entirely.
4. Entity coherence: Consistent brand description and cohesive narrative across every surface. Old descriptions don’t disappear. They sit out there contradicting everything you’re building now. When there’s confusion about what you do, the default is whoever is clearest. Most CMOs have never stress-tested this.
5. Content authority: You talking about yourself is low points. Others calling on you for expertise, citing your frameworks, referencing your research, that’s gold. One exception: Press releases on major wire services are now treated as third-party sources. The brands that succeed aren’t the ones that publish most. They’re the ones that get called.
6. Social and community authority: Whether your brand shows up in industry newsletters, analyst commentary, and online communities where buyers are comparing options. Are your executives adding genuine expertise? Consistency and generosity build authority in a way that self-promotion never will.
7. Technical readiness: Whether your website is built in a way that AI can find and index it. Think of it as leaving the door open. If the technical foundation isn’t clean, nothing else on this list matters. Most brands fix this first, check the box, and stop—having addressed the least important dimension of the problem.
THE CMOS WHO ARE GETTING AHEAD OF THIS
The playing field is flatter than it has ever been. A three-year-old company can build authority faster than a legacy brand coasting on name recognition, if they know what to build toward.
What they have in common isn’t budget or tenure. They’ve stopped asking “how do we show up more?” and started asking “how do we become the brand that gets recommended when it matters most?” Those are different programs. Different resources. Different timelines.
Earned media authority takes 12 to 18 months to build and maintain. It is a strategic advantage for anyone who starts now, because your competitor who waits another two quarters is two quarters further behind.
THE QUESTION UNDERNEATH THE QUESTION
When a CEO asks their CMO about visibility, they’re not asking about technology. They’re asking whether the company’s reputation is being built or eroded in the spaces where the next buyer, investor, or acquirer is going to look first.
That’s a communications question. It always has been. The difference now is that the answer is finally measurable. An outside perspective that shows you where you’re strong, where you’re bleeding, and where you have an opportunity to overtake a competitor. That’s the blueprint. You can fix what you know about. You can win what you can see.
The CMOs who recognize that now have a window. It’s not infinite.
