What Are the Big Digital PR Themes for 2026?
In 30 seconds
Sick of 2026 marketing predictions already? Us too. So, we thought we'd join in and make you sicker
Nah not really. This is our attempt to cut through the bullshit and talk about what we're excited about this year
We thought about titling this, "How we stopped worrying about the algorithm and learned to love proper storytelling again", but it was too long and graphic design on our social media cutdowns was going to suffer
If you've spent the past year watching LinkedIn fill up with hot takes about "GEO" (Generative Engine Optimisation, for the uninitiated), you'd be forgiven for thinking that digital PR in 2026 is all about gaming ChatGPT's citations and stuffing structured data into every paragraph.
You'd also be wrong.
After reviewing predictions from SEO practitioners, dozens of PR directors, and Google's own marketing division, the real story of 2026 is far more interesting (and frankly, more human) than the AI panic merchants would have you believe.
Here's what's happening: the fundamentals are the future.
The great irony: AI has made traditional PR essential
The tastiest contradiction of 2026? The more sophisticated AI search becomes, the more it depends on the exact things digital PR has always done well: building genuine authority, securing credible third-party validation, and creating content that actual humans find valuable enough to reference.
As Jem Leslie, Senior Strategist, explains: "All these AI systems people obsess over still need to pull information from somewhere. Yes, there’s the massive datasets AI was trained on, but this isn’t static. They're constantly crawling the web, indexing trusted sources, referencing authoritative content - i.e., the same things good SEO and PR have always focused on. The thing is, like with SEO, there's no shortcut to being cited by AI. You build preference through consistent expertise, quality coverage, and genuine authority."
Translation: You can't hack your way into ChatGPT's good books. You have to earn it the old-fashioned way.
This is excellent news for anyone who's been doing digital PR properly. The winning move in 2026 will be doubling down on what's always worked: getting quality coverage in respected outlets, building topical authority, and establishing your brand as the go-to source in your space.
1. Multi-platform omnipresence will become non-negotiable
Every 2026 forecast agrees on this one: discovery has fragmented beyond all recognition.
Your potential customers aren't just Googling anymore. They're asking ChatGPT for recommendations, searching TikTok for product reviews, checking Reddit for the brutally honest truth, watching YouTube tutorials, reading Instagram captions that now rank in Google, and scanning LinkedIn for B2B comparisons.
And – if you thought we’d parked the AI chat, you’re about to be disappointed – it's also important because AI systems are learning from all of it. Google's AI Overviews pull from Reddit, Wikipedia, and YouTube. LLMs scrape TikTok (which became the most scraped website in 2025, with a 321% year-on-year increase). Instagram content is now fully indexable by search engines, meaning they’re in your AIOs, too.
As John Drake, Senior Strategist, explains: "People's discovery journeys aren't linear anymore. They'll spot something on TikTok, deep-dive on YouTube, check Reddit for honest opinions, ask ChatGPT for a comparison, then finally Google the brand name. If you're only optimising for that last search, you're either very behind, or not really very interested in your target customer."
This is where most agencies will spectacularly fall apart. Traditional PR firms will treat social as someone else's problem. SEO agencies will optimise for Google and congratulate themselves. Social specialists will create platform-native content but completely miss that it's all feeding into search now.
If you’re in the mood for an analogy, it’s like watching three people try to assemble IKEA furniture while only reading their own third of the instructions.
Our approach: We've been treating TikTok as a search platform for a while now. We optimise Instagram captions for both engagement and indexability. We craft strategies that help to build Reddit community presence alongside traditional media relations. Because we understand that your reputation on external platforms directly shapes your search visibility- and your AI citability.
2. Only distinctive, expert-led content will survive
2026 will be the year AI finally kills mediocre content. Good effing riddance.
For years, the internet has been drowning in thin, templated rubbish churned out by the cheapest possible labour. "How to" articles that say absolutely nothing. Product roundups based on other roundups. Generic blog posts designed to tick an SEO box rather than provide actual value to actual humans.
The internet is full of content, people. If you haven’t got an original thought to add, please don’t bother. You’re giving marketers a bad name.
The difference in 2026 is, AI can now generate that drivel faster and cheaper than any crap content farm ever could. Which means if your content strategy is built on churning out generic regurgitated articles, you're about to be buried by machines that do mediocrity better than you ever will. And you’ll deserve it.
The flip side? Distinctive, expert-led content is about to become exponentially more valuable. Real humans are the premium.
SEOFOMO's survey found clear consensus: the shift is away from high-volume production towards quality, research, and genuine expertise. As Jamie Wilson, Digital PR Account Director at Bottle, notes: "If creating your content isn't time-consuming or challenging, it's probably not valuable. AI has made the easy stuff worthless. What cuts through now is work that needs real expertise, original thinking, and actual effort to create."
What WILL cut through in 2026:
Original research and data that can't be replicated by AI
First-hand expertise from real humans with real experience
Distinctive points of view that take a stance and defend it
Creative storytelling that makes people remember you
Evidence-led arguments that cite sources and show your working
This is where digital PR's editorial heritage becomes its superpower. We're not content factories. We're storytellers. We know the angle that makes a journalist lean forward. We understand narrative arc, human interest, and what actually makes something newsworthy rather than just dressed-up company propaganda.
And here's the thing that AI evangelists always miss: journalists can smell synthetic content from a mile away. They're already exhausted by it. What they want (what they've always wanted) is a genuinely interesting story from someone who knows what they're talking about.
Our approach: One strong, expert-led story that earns coverage in tier-one publications is worth more than fifty AI-generated blog posts. We focus on quality, not volume for the sake of it: creating the kind of distinctive content that builds brand reputations, earns citations, and actually gets remembered.
3. Measurement will shift from traffic to influence
Here's the uncomfortable truth: in 2026, if you're still measuring digital PR success purely on traffic and rankings, you're going to sound embarrassingly quaint.
Click-through rates are collapsing. AI Overviews and zero-click results mean users get their answers without visiting your site. Traditional attribution models systematically undervalue organic influence. Rankings fluctuate more than Labour policies U-turn. At the end of 2026, every platform is going to look hugely different to how it does right now.
The mature teams will move beyond vanity metrics to focus on what matters: visibility and influence.
The new success metrics will include:
Brand mention lift across platforms
Citation frequency in AI answers and media coverage
Share of voice in industry conversations
Branded search growth as a proxy for awareness
As Jem Leslie explains: "Rankings and CTR don’t have a real bearing on actual performance most of the time now. We need to be measuring visibility across the entire SERP: AI Overviews, featured snippets, everything. It's messier than tracking positions, but it's much more realistic for how your brand’s actually being seen and interpreted."
Will this be messier than tracking position 1 for your target keyword? Absolutely. Will it require more nuanced conversations with stakeholders who've been conditioned to think "more traffic = good"? Definitely. Will it be more honest about the actual value digital PR delivers? Yes.
Our approach: Aim to track visibility across the full ecosystem: traditional media, social platforms, AI citations, and search surfaces. PR is impossible to tie back with certainty to business outcomes like lead quality, branded demand, and conversion influence, so be wary of anyone who promises this. Be open to conversations with more flexibility on metrics. Because measuring clicks when users don't need to click is just performance theatre for people who aren't paying attention.
4. Human expertise will become the ultimate differentiator
Amidst all the AI anxiety, there's a refreshing counter-trend: the value of distinctly human qualities will skyrocket in 2026.
Journalists will be exhausted by AI-generated pitches. Audiences will smell synthetic content a mile away. Trust in faceless brands will decline while trust in real experts and authentic voices will rise.
We'll see this shift manifest as:
Personal PR (founder-led visibility) as the new breed of influencer marketing
Demand for verifiable, real human experts rather than fake AI spokespeople
Appetite for authentic, behind-the-scenes content over polished corporate messaging
Rise of creator partnerships for cultural fluency rather than just distribution
As Jasmine Maguire, Digital PR Account Director at Bottle, puts it: "Journalists are drowning in AI-generated pitches and deathly boring, templated content. With how much quicker it could be for some to pen an email with ChatGPT, I pray for journos' overcrowded inboxes...
"However, this means you need to stand out, especially with style and tone of voice that sounds authentically like you. And what helps to get journalists’ attention is distinctive ideas, genuine expertise, creative angles, and real human voices. Those that thrive are rooted in personable conversation and ‘realness’. If that sounds like old advice, good. The fundamentals haven't changed. The way people's brains and connections work hasn’t changed. The contrast between genuine storytelling and AI slop has just never been more important."
This is where agencies that understand storytelling will dominate. The human insight that spots an emotional hook in dry data? Can't automate that. The relationship-building that turns a one-off feature into an ongoing media partnership? That's about trust, history, consistency. The creative instinct that knows when to be serious and when to be playful? Pure human judgement.
Our approach: Our team are storytellers first, technologists second. We know how to find the human angle that makes data sing. We build genuine relationships with journalists based on consistently delivering stories they want to cover. And we understand that while the tools have changed, the way people's brains work – i.e. responding to emotion, narrative, and authenticity - won't have.
5. Visibility and authority strategies will define success. Pick your path
Here's what most agencies won't tell you: in 2026, you can't be everything to everyone. And that's actually great news.
Google still processes 16.4 billion searches per day in 2025. That's 373 times more than ChatGPT. Traditional search isn't dying—but how you win at discovery is splitting into two distinct paths.
The visibility play: Broad reach across platforms. Showing up wherever your audience looks. Maximum presence, consistent messaging, brand recognition at scale. This is for brands that need mass awareness, where being remembered matters more than being the definitive expert.
The authority play: Deep expertise in your niche. Becoming the cited source AI systems pull from. The brand journalists call for expert commentary. The framework that gets consistently referenced. This is for brands where trust and specialist knowledge are the differentiators.
Very few brands need both. Most need one, executed brilliantly.
Here's what's shifted: being found won't just mean ranking anymore. It'll mean showing up in AI Overviews (now appearing in 16% of searches), being cited when LLMs answer questions, appearing in platform-native searches on TikTok and Reddit, and yes, ranking in traditional results when that's where your customer is looking.
As Amy Kimber, Digital PR Account Director, explains: "If you were already answering questions with clarity, citing your sources responsibly, and featuring real, credible experts, your strategy doesn't need reinventing in 2026. The brands panicking about GEO right now are the ones who were gaming rankings and churning out drivel rather than building genuine value or sharing an interesting point of view."
The good news: you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Coverage, quality backlinks, brand mentions, and publication domain authority still contribute to improved results. But they now serve dual purposes: building traditional SEO signals and training AI systems on your expertise.
Your North Star should be shifting from pure rankings to brand recognition and entity authority - but charter these alongside traditional fundamentals, not instead of them.
Amy adds: "Just because an AI agent cites you once doesn't make you an authority. What matters is whether your framework becomes the version those AI systems consistently use. That only comes from establishing yourself through media coverage, expert commentary, and showing up where it matters."
Earned media in respected outlets builds both paths. High-DA coverage secures backlinks and establishes you as a trusted source for AI citations. Thought leadership demonstrates your expertise and becomes the content systems reference.
Our approach: Whether we're building your visibility strategy (broad reach across platforms, showing up wherever your audience looks) or your authority strategy (establishing you as the cited expert in your niche), we track traditional metrics (coverage, mentions, links) while monitoring how you show up in AI systems and industry conversations. Different goals, same rigorous approach to earning the recognition that builds your brand.
So, what should you do in 2026?
After wading through thousands of words of predictions from the bigwigs and sitting with them for a while, here's what the smartest practitioners are (and you should also be) prioritising this year:
1. Double down on fundamentals while competitors panic
While others slash SEO budgets to fund new, expensive AI visibility tools that'll be obsolete by Q3, invest in the foundational work that compounds: technical excellence, content quality, genuine expertise, and brand authority. Boring? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely.
2. Build your brand everywhere that matters
Stop thinking in channels like it's 2018. Start thinking in terms of omnipresence. Where does your audience look for information, validation, and recommendations? Be there. With consistent expertise. Not with half-arsed content that looks like you've just discovered TikTok.
3. Create content that's worth citing
Structure your content clearly. Lead with evidence. Demonstrate expertise. Make it easy to extract and attribute. But for the love of all that's holy, don't sacrifice storytelling for structure.
4. Earn mentions and citations, not just links
Digital PR's core strength - securing third-party validation in respected outlets - is now the primary driver of AI visibility. The methodology hasn't changed; the payoff just got bigger.
5. Measure influence, not just traffic
Accept that perfect attribution is impossible, but directional insight is valuable. And prepare to have some awkward conversations with stakeholders who still think more clicks = more success.
6. Use AI as an assistant, not a replacement
AI excels at analysis, automation, and eliminating grunt work. It's absolutely terrible at judgement, creativity, and relationship building. Use it to free up time for the distinctly human work that drives results. Not to replace the humans who know what they're doing.
The Bottle perspective
We've been banging on about integrated discovery strategies for a while now. About how social platforms are search engines. About how AI systems learn from the broader web. About how brand authority matters more than individual rankings.
It's gratifying (if slightly annoying) to watch the rest of the industry finally catch up.
But here's what we're focused on for 2026: yes, we understand the technical requirements for AI visibility. Yes, we optimise content for citation-readiness. Yes, we track brand mentions across LLM responses. We're not Luddites pretending the internet hasn't changed.
But we also haven't forgotten that behind every algorithm is a human making a decision. That journalists want stories, not keyword-stuffed press releases masquerading as news. That audiences respond to emotion, not optimisation. That brands are built through consistent, memorable experiences, not just appearing in search results.
The agencies that'll thrive in 2026 are the ones that combine technical sophistication with storytelling craft. The ones that understand both how AI systems work and how human minds work. The ones that can optimise for machines while creating for people.
That's not a balance. That's the entire job.
And that's the sweet spot where digital PR lives. It's exactly where Bottle operates. It's why we exist – and why 2026 is going to be an exciting year.
Want to talk about building your 2026 visibility and authority strategy? Get in touch.