- Visibility in search increasingly means appearing in AI answers, not just winning website visits. Most searches now end without a click, and the clicks that AI answers displace are organic ones — so being talked about in places AI trusts matters as much as ranking.
- UK marketers are responding. The Q3 2026 Bellwether showed budgets revised up at the fastest rate in more than two years, with PR the standout: a record high and its thirteenth straight quarter of upward revisions.
- PR has become a search feeder. The brands AI mentions most, and the websites it cites most are largely different. What others publish about you now feeds into what AI says about you.
- The double bubble: brand building and immediate sales from the same pound, is achievable, but only if the brand side of the bubble is doing its job. There are five practical recommendations at the end of this article.
What good PR looks like now
Before we look at the numbers, a definition because "PR" covers everything from article-counting to genuine reputation building.
Good PR builds trust, reputation and understanding with the audiences that matter to you. It combines useful stories, credible expertise, honest communication and evidence, not simply a high volume of coverage. In practice that means original research, expert commentary and substantiated customer stories, in publications your buyers actually read.
AI search raises the stakes rather than changing the definition. Relevant, independent coverage helps establish what a brand is known for — and what other people say about you now feeds into what AI says about you. However, mentions and recommendations are not guaranteed; they are earned the way they always were, by being genuinely worth talking about.
The week that told one story
Three things happened in the space of week commencing 12th October 2026.
More than 1,000 senior marketers gathered at Old Billingsgate for Semrush's Spotlight conference, an event built on one idea: brand visibility in an AI-led discovery world.
Two days later, the IPA Bellwether Report for Q3 2026 showed UK marketing budgets revised up at their fastest rate in more than two years. And when Decision Marketing asked the industry what it all meant, the answer came back in two words: "double bubble". Brands want brand building and immediate sales from every pound they deploy.
It sounds like nirvana. It is also, if you will forgive the pun, a bubble that only floats if you fill it with the right stuff. We know that beneath the headlines sits an uncomfortable truth: AI search is quietly rewriting the rules of visibility, and it is forcing brands to reconsider how they use paid media and PR content to get found.
Zero-click is now the default
Let's start with the awkward bit. The open-web click is in steady decline. Roughly seven in ten Google searches in both the US and the UK now end without a click, according to analysis of Similarweb US clickstream data and UK figures. AI Overviews appeared on nearly four in ten US desktop queries in June 2026, up from about a quarter a year earlier. A randomised study published on PPC Land found that when an AI Overview appears, outbound organic clicks fall by around 40%, and zero-click searches rise by roughly a third. However, sponsored clicks did not change, at least in that study.
AI answers are eating organic clicks. They are not, on this evidence, eating paid ones.
Paid search is a different story
What has happened to the commercial value of search? The paid side tells you plenty. In Q2 2026, Alphabet reported Google Search and other revenue up 17% year on year. Growth came from increasing search volume, not just price inflation. Sundar Pichai credited the growth to people adopting one seamless search experience across AI Overviews and AI Mode.
It is clear the value in search has not disappeared. Where searches lead is changing, and Google is rather well placed either way. You have to admire them for their achievements.
Enter the double bubble
Now look at where UK marketers put their extra money in Q3 2026, according to the IPA Bellwether report.
- Public relations: a record net balance of +15.3%, and its thirteenth consecutive quarter of upward revisions.
- Main media: a nine-year high, as brands renew spend on reach and engagement.
- Sales promotion and other online formats: strongly up, as brands push to convert demand now.
- Market research: back in growth, as brands try to understand real audiences again.
One caveat worth remembering: the Bellwether measures the balance of companies raising budgets against those cutting them, not the percentage change in money spent, so treat these as sentiment, not invoices.
This is the double bubble in practice. Brands are funding demand creation (PR, main media, events) and demand capture (online, promotion) at the same time. As Ozone's Emma Cranston put it in Decision Marketing's round-up:
"Increasingly, brands want both from every pound they deploy."
Why PR's record high is really a search story
Here is where it gets interesting for those of us who obsess over rankings. Why would PR, of all channels, be the star of an AI-led era?
Research launched at Spotlight offers a clue. Semrush's AI Visibility Index, covering ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews across the UK and US, found that the overlap between the top 100 brands mentioned and the top 100 domains cited averaged fewer than half. Put simply, the brands AI talks about and the websites AI relies on are often not the same brands.
According to The Drum, the UK grocery aisles show how wide that gap can run. Tesco and Asda both appeared in the top 100 brand mentions on all four platforms in every month studied. But in July, Tesco ranked 25th among cited domains on UK ChatGPT, while Asda ranked 606th.
News and information sites also featured prominently among ChatGPT's UK citations totalling around three in ten of its top 100 UK sources by citation weight; a heavier share than in the US. Meanwhile, separate Semrush research found that 85% of topics on ChatGPT still have no clear brand owner, which is either a warning or an open goal, depending on how fast you move.
The industry's own reading of the budget data points the same way. Kantar's Jodie Gillary told Decision Marketing:
"AI search is clearly at the front of CMOs' minds, so the rising spend on PR and events – channels which create the online footprint and buzz which LLMs draw on when making recommendations – comes as no surprise."
Her warning was blunter still: if it is not clear why the brand is relevant, LLMs simply won't clock it and won't suggest it. In an answer engine, in other words, PR is no longer just reputation management. It is raw material for the machines.
The same lesson we keep learning
If any of this sounds familiar, that is because it is the argument we made in our article 8 strategic priorities for SEO and AEO in 2027. As our Head of SEO/AEO, James Gardner, put it:
"The future of SEO is not about optimising for AI. It is about becoming the organisation that AI systems want to recommend."
That means genuine expertise, original evidence, brand renown and, crucially, independent corroboration. The PR budget and the SEO strategy have finally been introduced to each other, and frankly it’s about time.
What this means for UK marketers
Is the double bubble achievable? Yes, but mostly effective if the brand side of the bubble is doing its job. We have five practical recommendations for brands, from the data:
- Measure mentions, citations and recommendations separately. Being named in an AI answer, having your site cited and being actively recommended are three different positions with different fixes.
- Plan PR as a search channel. Brief earned media against the questions customers actually ask AI, then track whether coverage turns into AI mentions.
- Rethink organic KPIs. Traffic is a weaker KPI when most searches end without a click. Add AI share of voice, branded search demand and assisted conversions to your reporting dashboard.
- Make paid media earn its bubble. Paid clicks are where Google's volume growth is. Test where paid adds incremental reach or conversions, especially on branded and high-intent terms, and connect its messaging to the same evidence behind your owned content and PR. It’s also worth testing whether stronger AI visibility lowers your cost to acquire new customers.
- Fund real audience insight. The return of market research spending matters. Use customer interviews, research and search data to decide which questions your PR, content and paid campaigns should address.
Plan marketing activity cohesively
Zero-click has not ended the commercial value of search, but it is rearranging where that value sits, and on the evidence, paid clicks are holding up while organic referrals decline. UK marketers, according to the Bellwether, are responding by funding brand and activation together. The lesson from Spotlight, from the Bellwether and from our own AEO priorities is all marketing activities should not be planned in isolation.
Credible coverage and useful content help establish what you are known for; paid media builds reach and captures demand. Neither comes with a guaranteed invitation from the algorithm, which is precisely why they work better together. Data, technology and people, all driving in the same direction.
If you would like to talk about making your bubble a bit more buoyant, please get in touch. It's in our DNA.
A quick PS — back in 1999, when equimedia was formed and digital was still called "New Media", measurable marketing that delivered return on investment was called ‘Direct Marketing’ or ‘Brand Response Marketing’. Historically the discipline came into its own in times of financial stress when additional budget justification and accountability was required. Some things never change; the labels just get shorter.
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| Author | Andrew Burgess |
| Channel | SEM |