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AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics?
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.
Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.
Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Media monitoring helps organizations stay informed about what’s being said across online news, print, broadcast, podcasts, and other media channels. Whether you're tracking brand mentions, measuring PR performance, monitoring competitors, or identifying emerging trends, our expert guides, best practices, and industry insights will help you build a smarter media monitoring strategy and make more informed communications decisions.

Discover expert media monitoring guides, best practices, and industry insights to track brand mentions, monitor competitors, and stay ahead of the news.

Media Monitoring: Guides, Best Practices & Industry Insights

Influencer marketing used to be a scrappy outreach tactic reserved for brands with big pockets. Now, it’s a permanent part of digital marketing — spurring the creation of entire influencer platforms to support it. 

One example is Aspire.io, which positions itself as an all-in-one influencer marketing tool. It handles everything from influencer discovery to outreach and campaign tracking. Instead of finding and vetting influencers and communicating with them manually, everything happens on the platform.

Aspire isn’t the only influencer platform that can do these things. A wide range of platforms serve different budgets, industries, and team sizes. Choosing the right tools depends less on brand recognition and more on your specific goals and resources. 

With this in mind, let’s look at 10 Aspire alternatives and how they give you a leg up in influencer marketing.

Criteria for Selecting Influencer Marketing Platforms

Aspire.io is one of many examples of influencer marketing platforms. In general, it offers key features like influencer discovery, audience demographics and engagement metrics, influencer outreach tools, campaign management dashboards, and fraud detection. 

If you’re considering Aspire alternatives, looking for these same features offers a solid baseline. We sought the 10 best alternatives to Aspire by comparing key features and functions, along with looking at price ranges to suit different budgets and company sizes. We also considered the platform interface, ease of use, integrations, and depth of analytics.

We've compared the options to give teams everything they need to make impactful choices:

We chose these 10 Aspire alternatives based on how easy they are to use, core features and functions, data analytics, and how well they support an influencer marketing strategy.

Meltwater's end-to-end influencer marketing platform helps brands discover and connect with creators, run influencer campaigns, and measure impact with data-driven insights.

Meltwater's full platform extends beyond influencer management to include social listening and media intelligence to help brands understand the total impact of each influencer’s posts and the impression they leave on their audiences.

Influencer discovery with audience analytics and AI-powered summaries

AI-powered and visual search for narrowing down results

Campaign management, collaboration workflows, and payment system

Integration with broader media monitoring and competitive insights

<table class="table-primary alternate-color">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Strengths</th>
<th>Limitations</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Enterprise-scale analytics</td>
<td>Aspire is influencer-centric, while Meltwater’s influencer tools are part of a larger suite</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Broader platform capabilities to include PR, social listening, and media and customer intelligence</td>
<td>Steeper learning curve compared to Aspire due to its broad feature set</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Grin is a creator management platform built specifically for eCommerce brands. It helps teams discover influencers, manage relationships, send products, and track affiliate sales from one place.

Unlike broader marketing suites, Grin leans heavily into integrations and performance tracking tied to online stores. 

Influencer discovery by niche and engagement

Ecommerce integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce

Affiliate link and discount code tracking

Payment processing and contract management

Tip: Take a look at more Grin alternatives

<table class="table-primary alternate-color">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Strengths</th>
<th>Limitations</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Strong eCommerce integrations</td>
<td>Not driven by marketplace discovery, so it’s mostly outreach rather than inbound influencer leads</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Ties activity directly to sales</td>
<td>Not ideal for brands outside of eCommerce</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Powerful product seeding workflows</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Influencity is a data-driven influencer marketing platform designed to help brands discover creators, analyze audiences, manage campaigns, and measure performance.

The platform emphasizes analytics and audience intelligence, giving teams detailed insights into follower authenticity, demographics, and engagement behavior.

<table class="table-primary alternate-color">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Strengths</th>
<th>Limitations</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Granular audience data</td>
<td>Leans more heavily on search-based discovery rather than inbound leads</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Strong fraud detection</td>
<td>Fewer commerce features for affiliate sales</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Made for brands, eCommerce, and agencies</td>
<td>Heavy on analytics, which might be too much for teams seeking simplicity</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Traackr is an enterprise-focused influencer marketing platform built around data and global campaign management.

It emphasizes influencer relationship management, budget tracking, and ROI analysis, making it popular with larger brands running multi-market programs.

Organizational tools to segment influencers by campaign needs

Automated product seeding and campaign management

<table class="table-primary alternate-color">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Strengths</th>
<th>Limitations</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Enterprise-grade analytics, with an emphasis on creator performance</td>
<td>More depth than many startups or small companies need</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Global data</td>
<td>Potentially higher cost given its focus on enterprise companies</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Real-time campaign tracking</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Tip: Check out more Traackr alternatives.

Upfluence is an end-to-end influencer and affiliate marketing platform that helps brands discover creators, manage outreach, track sales, and automate payments.

The platform positions itself as a data-driven solution with strong eCommerce integrations and an AI influencer agent that discovers influencers on your behalf.

Agency-focused features to manage multiple clients

Tip: Take a look at more Upfluence alternatives.

<table class="table-primary alternate-color">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Strengths</th>
<th>Limitations</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Strong affiliate capabilities</td>
<td>Complex interface with lots of features</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Customizable pricing so you only pay for features you need</td>
<td>Typically used by large brands and agencies, which might be too much for smaller companies</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Free tools available, including fake follower check and influencer comparison tools</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

MightyScout is an influencer discovery and competitive analysis tool that focuses primarily on Instagram.

The platform helps brands and agencies uncover creators by analyzing follower data, audience quality, and competitor partnerships. It leans more toward research and prospecting than full campaign execution.

Compare the best influencer marketing platforms

Top 10 Alternatives to Aspire.io for Influencer Marketing

PR has always been shaped by technology, but the shift you are seeing now is different in both speed and scope. AI PR assistants are no longer experimental tools sitting on the edges of your workflow, they are becoming central to how communications teams operate every day. You are expected to monitor more channels, respond faster, personalize outreach, and prove impact, all while working with limited resources. 

AI assistants step into this reality not as replacements for communicators, but as force multipliers that help you keep up and move ahead.

What makes this moment feel like a true turning point is how deeply AI is being woven into daily PR work. Instead of toggling between dashboards, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools, you can now ask questions in natural language and get clear, actionable answers. 

With tools like Meltwater’s Mira, AI becomes part of how you think through a problem, not just how you automate a task. This marks a shift from PR as a series of manual steps to PR as a continuous, insight-driven practice powered by real-time intelligence.

Understanding the "why": The core benefits of AI in PR

From concept to application: How AI assistants actually work in PR

Practical steps to integrate AI assistants into your PR workflow

What the future holds: The evolving role of AI in communications

Ready to empower your PR strategy with AI?

One of the first benefits you notice with AI PR assistants is speed, because tasks that once took hours or days can now happen in minutes. Monitoring coverage, summarizing sentiment, building reports, and drafting content no longer require you to start from scratch every time, instead, AI handles the heavy lifting so you can focus on decisions and strategy.

With an AI assistant like Mira, efficiency is about more than just doing the same work faster, it is about collapsing multi-step workflows into a single conversation. 

You can ask for a briefing on brand coverage, follow up with a question about competitor movement, and then request a draft summary for leadership without leaving the interface. This kind of efficiency changes how you allocate your time and energy. You spend less time managing tools and more time shaping narratives.

Mira is an AI PR assistant integrated with Meltwater's entire product suite and industry leading data sources.

Speed alone is not enough if it only delivers surface-level information, the real value of AI in PR comes from insight. AI PR assistants can analyze vast volumes of media and social data that no human team could realistically process on its own, empowering you to move beyond counting mentions and start understanding patterns, drivers, and context.

When AI is powered by a trusted dataset, as Mira is, it not only takes much less time to surface actionable insights, but those insights are more reliable. You can see how narratives evolve, where sentiment shifts are coming from, and which topics are gaining momentum before they peak. Instead of reacting to yesterday’s news, you are better positioned to anticipate what comes next and advise stakeholders with confidence.

PR has always been about relationships, but scaling those relationships has been a challenge. AI PR assistants help you personalize outreach and messaging at larger scales, without losing relevance or authenticity. By analyzing journalist interests, historical coverage, and audience response, AI can help you tailor pitches and content more effectively.

This does not mean handing over relationship-building to a machine, but simply using AI to surface the right context at the right moment so you can communicate with purpose. With Mira, you can quickly understand which angles are most relevant for specific media contacts and how your messaging aligns with current narratives, allowing you to stay personal, even as your scope of work expands.

Risk moves fast in the modern media environment, where a single social post or news story can escalate into a full-blown issue in mere hours. AI PR assistants can significantly improve early detection and response by monitoring signals across news, social, and emerging channels continuously.

Instead of relying on manual checks or delayed alerts, you get near real-time awareness of spikes, sentiment changes, and emerging narratives. Mira helps you understand not just that something is happening, but why it matters and what to do next, providing crucial context when you need to brief leadership, align teams, and respond decisively under pressure.

Content creation and curation: your AI wordsmith

AI PR assistants support content creation in a way that feels collaborative rather than mechanical. You remain the voice and the decision-maker, while AI helps you get from idea to draft faster. Whether you are preparing a press release, an executive briefing, or a campaign recap, AI can generate structured drafts based on real data and current coverage.

With Mira, content creation is grounded in live media intelligence, which means drafts are informed by what is actually happening in your industry, not generic language patterns. You can refine tone, adjust emphasis, and add human judgment where it matters most, resulting in content that is faster to produce and more relevant to your audience.

You can ask Mira to help with any PR and marketing communications tasks however you like - but there's also a library of commonly used prompts to help you get started.

Media monitoring and analysis: the always-on sentinel

Media monitoring used to mean setting up searches and checking dashboards throughout the day. AI PR assistants change this by acting as an always-on sentinel that interprets information for you. 

Instead of wading through raw data, you can ask direct questions and receive clear summaries.

Mira transforms monitoring from a passive data-dump into an interactive conversation. You can ask how coverage has shifted since yesterday, which outlets are driving sentiment, or how your brand compares to competitors this week, an approach that reduces noise and helps you stay focused on what actually requires action.

Targeted outreach and relationship building: smart connections

Outreach works best when it is timely and relevant, and AI PR assistants support this by connecting insights from media monitoring with outreach planning. You gain a clearer picture of which journalists are active on certain topics and how your story fits into the broader conversation.

Using Mira, you can quickly identify the right contacts for a specific angle and understand the context behind their recent work, empowering you to approach outreach with confidence and relevance, strengthening relationships instead of treating them as transactional interactions.

See also: How to write a pitch that gets results, and optimizing your PR pitch for GEO

Crisis preparedness and response: your digital firefighter

Crisis management is one of the most demanding areas of PR, and AI assistance can make a real difference here. By continuously scanning for early warning signs, AI PR assistants help you spot potential issues before they escalate.

When a situation does arise, Mira helps you move from detection to understanding quickly. You can assess sentiment, identify key drivers, and track how narratives spread across channels. This gives you the information you need to respond strategically, not reactively, even when time is limited.

Performance measurement and reporting: proving your worth

Proving the value of PR has always been a challenge. AI PR assistants make measurement more accessible by automating reporting and translating data into insight. Instead of manually compiling reports, you can generate summaries that highlight outcomes and trends.

Mira supports performance measurement by tying coverage, sentiment, and narrative shifts together in a way that makes sense to stakeholders. This helps you move beyond activity metrics and focus on impact, strengthening your role as a strategic advisor within the organization.

Before adopting any AI PR assistant, you need to be clear about where your workflow slows you down. Maybe it is reporting that eats up your time. Maybe it is monitoring that feels overwhelming. By identifying these friction points, you can focus on using AI where it delivers the most value.

With Mira, teams often start by addressing time-consuming analysis and reporting tasks. Once those are streamlined, they expand usage into planning, outreach, and strategic insight.

You do not need to overhaul your entire workflow on day one, you can start with a specific use case and build confidence from there. AI adoption works best when it is iterative and grounded in real work.

As you use Mira for daily tasks like briefings or coverage summaries, you begin to understand how to ask better questions and get more useful answers. This learning curve is part of the value, helping you integrate AI naturally into how you work.

AI PR assistants improve with guidance — the more context you provide, the better the output becomes. This means taking time to refine prompts, review results, and adjust how you use the tool.

Mira is designed to meet you where you are, even if you are not a data expert. Over time, as you refine how you interact with it, the assistant becomes a more effective partner in your workflow.

AI can support many aspects of PR, but it cannot replace judgment, empathy, or creativity. Maintaining the human touch is essential, especially in relationship-driven work like media relations and crisis response.

Using Mira allows you to protect that human element by freeing you from repetitive, time-consuming, manual tasks. You spend less time compiling information and more time thinking, creating, communicating, and advising.

As AI becomes more embedded in PR, ethical considerations matter more than ever; transparency, accuracy, and responsible use should guide how you deploy AI PR assistants.

Purpose-built tools like Mira are designed with governance and data integrity in mind, helping you use AI responsibly. This is especially important when you are advising leadership and shaping public narratives.

AI PR assistants are reshaping how you plan, execute, and prove the impact of communications work, moving teams from reactive execution to proactive strategy

Mira Studio is your go-to starting point for building projects from scratch, while Mira Companion appears as a helpful side-bar throughout Meltwater's product suite. 

The role of AI in PR will continue to evolve, but the direction is clear. AI PR assistants will become more proactive, more contextual, and more integrated into decision-making. Instead of reacting to prompts alone, they will help surface opportunities, risks, and insights automatically.

For communications professionals, this means your role becomes even more strategic. As AI handles more of the operational workload, your value lies in interpretation, storytelling, and leadership.

Tools like Mira support this shift by giving you faster access to insight without distancing you from the work that matters.

The industry is moving beyond the early-adopter, experimental stage, and AI PR assistants are now helping comms professionals build more resilient, responsive, and strategic communications functions. By integrating AI thoughtfully, you position your team to keep pace with change and lead conversations with confidence.

Introducing Mira - The Power of Meltwater AI, Unleashed

Mira represents what is possible when AI is designed specifically for PR and communications, bringing together data, insight, and action in a way that supports how you actually work. The question is no longer whether AI belongs in your PR strategy, but how quickly you choose to make it part of your daily practice.

A PR AI assistant is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to support communications work, including media monitoring, analysis, content creation, and reporting. It helps you work faster and make more informed decisions by turning large volumes of data into clear insight.

What tasks can AI assistants do for PR professionals?

AI assistants can monitor coverage, analyze sentiment, summarize trends, draft content, support outreach planning, and automate reporting. Tools like Mira are designed to handle these tasks within a single, conversational workflow.

How do AI assistants compare to human PR professionals?

AI assistants do not replace human communicators. They augment your work by handling data-heavy and repetitive tasks, allowing you to focus on strategy, relationships, and judgment. The strongest results come when AI and human expertise work together.

AI PR assistants are reshaping how you plan, execute, and prove the impact of communications work, moving teams from reactive execution to proactive strategy.

Get a free demo of Mira, the Meltwater PR assistant

How AI Assistants Are Transforming PR: A Practical Guide

It can feel like there is a constant need to reinvent the marketing engine and reinvent the wheel. AI has transformed discovery… but even with all this change, consumer motivations remain the same. People still want answers, connection, and authenticity that they can trust.

— Upali Dasgupta, Senior Director of Marketing at Meltwater

In the Digital 2026: What’s Changed, What Hasn’t, and What Matters Most webinar, Upali joins Simon Kemp, Chief Analyst at DataReportal and Founder and CEO of Kepios, to cut through the noise. Drawing on fresh insights from the Digital 2026: Global Overview Report, they unpack what’s truly shifting in the digital landscape, along with the fundamentals that remain. Packed with data-backed insights and practical tips, their conversation focused on helping marketers move from overwhelm to clarity.

Below, we break down five key takeaways from the webinar, highlighting:

The actions that will matter most in 2026 and beyond

Want the full insights, data, and expert analysis? Watch the complete webinar on demand here.

Takeaway 1: AI Is Enhancing — Not Replacing — the Customer Journey.

ChatGPT’s mobile app has 557 million monthly active users, nearly eight times as many as Google Gemini.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of our new AI age, you’re not alone. Marketers around the world are scrambling to catch up to the over 1 billion people using standalone AI platforms each month. 

LLM usage is evolving, and it’s here to stay. From the Claude mobile app’s 14.8 million monthly active users to the ChatGPT app’s 557 million, audiences around the world are already using LLMs habitually. 

However, while these platforms point consumers to resources, they don’t replace existing brand research, discovery, and purchase behaviors. Audiences may use ChatGPT to learn more about your brand, but awareness still largely begins with search engines, social media ads, TV ads, and other existing elements of your media mix.

Takeaway 2: Brand Discovery Data Is Key to Optimizing Your Media Mix.

Social media ads, search engines, TV ads, and word of mouth are leading sources of brand discovery for internet users aged 16 to 64, with varying degrees of importance across the included age groups.

Speaking of where awareness begins, Digital 2026 data shows that social media ads are the leading channel for brand discovery for Gen-Z consumers. Search engines top the list for the 35 to 64 age group, while TV ads and word of mouth are paramount for retirees. However, all four channels are significant sources of brand discovery across age groups. Finding the right mix for you and your audience requires a fact-finding journey of its own.

Each one of these charts is designed to raise you to a higher-value question… That’s how I like to use data. It’s never giving me the answer, really. It’s just leading me to better and better questions that allow me to make really richly informed plans. 

— Simon Kemp, Founder and CEO of Kepios, Chief Analyst at DataReportal

There’s no universal silver bullet for brand awareness strategies, but demographic breakdowns like the one shown in the chart above are critical for assessing your current approach. 

Takeaway 3: Connected TV (CTV) Is the Marketing Channel to Watch for Digital Video Growth.

Globally, an average of 40.5% of YouTube’s ad audience is reachable via CTV.

Just over half of internet users aged 16+ own a smart TV, up from 46.6% in 2023, signaling exciting changes in how audiences consume content primarily created for online channels. 

Vlogs and short-form video now extend into more traditional home entertainment contexts, creating promising new opportunities for marketers, depending on their target regions. For example, in the UK, over half of YouTube’s ad audience is reachable via CTV. That figure stands at nearly 85% in the US. 

For marketers in these and other locations who prioritize video content, CTV may be worth a closer look. 

Curious? Explore YouTube- and TV-specific data broken down by market and demographic in the Digital 2026 report to learn more.

Takeaway 4: Winning Brands Integrate Into Digital Culture.

Therapy and companionship, organization, and finding purpose are the leading genAI and LLM use cases globally, according to the Digital 2026: Global Overview Report.

The “social” in social media still matters most. Digital 2026 data shows the top reason people log in is to stay connected with friends and family. The content and brands that perform best on social media fuel that connection with content that sparks conversation, debate, bonding, and learning.

Similarly, as marketers build AI and LLM strategies, cultural and contextual intelligence is critical. Therapy and companionship are now the top generative AI use cases (up from #2 in 2024), with “finding purpose” close behind. Brands that don’t understand these contexts risk missing the mark.

Our audiences are going to these platforms to ask existential, fundamental questions. If you think that you can just show up and show an ad for shampoo, it’s not going to fit in that setting… When you’re thinking about what your AI strategy is, you’ve got to understand where AI fits in your audience’s world, where you fit in your audience’s world, and, therefore, how you fit within their AI activities.  

The Meltwater Blog

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