HawkscanEarned media
Earned media is coverage a brand gets from third parties without paying for it, such as press articles, independent reviews, comparison sites and expert roundups. It sits next to owned media, the brand's own channels, and paid media, its ads. AI assistants such as ChatGPT cite earned sources far more often than Google search results feature them.
Why earned media matters in AI search
AI engines lean on what others say about a brand, more than search engines do. In a September 2025 paper, Chen et al. compared Google with a web-enabled GPT on the same ranking-style queries. For software queries in the United States, Google's results were 45.4% earned media, 43.7% brand-owned and 10.9% social. GPT's citations were 72.7% earned, 26.7% brand and almost no social.
In a second test on well-known brands, ChatGPT drew 93.5% of its sources from earned domains. The authors describe a "systematic and overwhelming bias towards Earned media." The regional tests covered the United States and Canada, and sources were labeled with help from GPT, so read the exact shares as indicative.
How earned media works
Marketers sort media by who controls the message:
| Owned media | Paid media | Earned media | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who publishes | The brand | A publisher, for a fee | An independent third party |
| Examples | Website, blog, docs | Ads, sponsored posts | Reviews, press, comparisons |
| Who controls the message | The brand | The brand, within ad rules | The third party |
Earned media carries weight because the brand cannot write it. Google's rater guidelines, the source of E-E-A-T, make the same call for human reviewers: when a site and "reputable independent sources" disagree about it, "trust the independent sources."
The preference has limits. Chen et al. found that for transactional queries, such as buying a specific phone, brand-owned pages rise in every system tested, and GPT amplifies them most.
Example: a ranking prompt
Chen et al. used prompts such as "Rank the best smartphones from 1 to 10." A question like this asks for a verdict, and verdicts come from reviewers. In the paper's consumer electronics tests, GPT leaned on TechRadar, Tom's Guide and Wikipedia.
For a phone maker, that changes the job. Its product pages explain the phone, but the shortlist in the answer is largely built from what TechRadar and Tom's Guide wrote about it. A brand missing from those reviews is unlikely to make the answer, whatever its own site says.
How to measure and earn more earned media
Start from the answers, not from a media list. Hawkscan lists the pages ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Mode cite for your prompts, with how many answers cite each page, whether it mentions your brand, and the 8 most-cited domains. Those pages are your earned media targets.
Then earn your place on them: product access for reviewers, original data for journalists, accurate information for comparison sites. The tactics belong to digital PR, and the mentions count even without a link. Keep owned pages strong for transactional prompts, where brand sites still get cited.
Sources
- arXiv (Chen et al.), Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI Search ()
- Google, Search Quality Rater Guidelines ()
