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2026 State of PR: 1,100+ Communicators Surveyed

Public relations is evolving faster than ever. Between generative AI, misinformation, and shrinking budgets, PR pros are being asked to do more—and prove more—with less.

Created in partnership with leading agency, We. Communications, Meltwater’s 2026 State of PR report reveals how over 1,100 global communications professionals are responding to these challenges and redefining what success looks like.

AI is officially mainstream: Over 90% PR teams have already integrated generative AI into their workflows for tasks like drafting press releases, optimizing content, and brainstorming.

Measurement is evolving: PR pros are under growing pressure to link comms outcomes to business KPIs, but over 40% are still measuring activity instead of outcomes

Budgets are tight, but expectations are higher: More than half of respondents expect little or no change in PR investment for 2026, despite increased demand for strategic impact.

Leadership buy-in is key: Communicators who can connect storytelling with data are earning their seat at the decision-making table.

Get more insights, benchmarks, and practical takeaways to strengthen your strategy and secure your seat at the leadership table.

Download the 2026 State of PR report to stay ahead of what’s next for PR. 

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The State of PR Report surveyed over 1,100 professionals on their views about the current state of the industry and expectations for the future.

State of PR 2026

Global Research Report by Meltwater & YouGov

How do audiences really feel about AI-generated content?

Trust it? Skeptical of it? Engage with it differently across platforms and generations?

AI is transforming how content is created, but public perception of AI-generated content is evolving just as quickly.

Created in partnership with the leading market research firm, YouGov, the Public Perception of AI-Generated Content Report reveals how almost 10,000 people interpret and respond to AI-generated content, and what it means for brands, marketers, and communicators navigating this new era.

Across industries and regions, this report delivers actionable insights for anyone shaping modern brand storytelling.

For brands and communicators, understanding perception is critical. Missteps can damage credibility. The right approach can unlock engagement at scale.

This report offers clear, data-backed guidance to help you:

Develop AI content strategies that resonate

Navigate transparency and disclosure challenges

Make informed decisions about AI adoption in marketing and communications

Download the full report to understand where trust is built, where it’s broken, and how to communicate effectively in an AI-driven world.

The images on this page and some images within the report were created using AI and are used for visual illustration only.

By completing and submitting this form, you will receive information, tips, and promotions from Meltwater, and you agree that Meltwater may share your contact information with YouGov for marketing purposes.

How do audiences really feel about AI-generated content?
Trust it? Sceptical of it? Engage with it differently across platforms and generations?

The Public Perception of AI-Generated Content Report

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Public Perception of AI-Generated Content

Learn how to influence ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and other LLMs, before they shape your reputation for you.

AI is now the first place people go to research brands. If you’re not showing up in AI-generated answers, you’re invisible to your audience. This guide shows PR and communications teams exactly how to take control.

Inside the guide, you’ll discover how to:

Understand how AI makes decisions: Learn how training data and real-time citations influence brand visibility.

Turn PR into a growth engine for AI visibility: See why earned media is now one of the most powerful signals for LLMs.

Build a repeatable AI visibility strategy: Follow a proven workflow to monitor, influence, and optimize your presence.

Leverage the C.O.R.E. framework: Scale visibility with Credibility, Omnipresence, Readability, and Endurance.

Activate the right channels: From news media to Reddit and YouTube, know where AI actually looks.

This guide is backed by insights from Meltwater’s GenAI Lens, the first platform built to monitor and optimize brand visibility in AI. 

Take control of your brand in the age of AI

Download the Own Your AI Visibility guide and start shaping how AI represents your brand today.

Get the Guide!

Download this free guide to learn how to influence ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and co., and take control of your brand’s visibility in AI-driven search.

Free Guide: Own Your Brand’s Visibility in AI

Own Your AI Visibility - Shape What AI Says About Your Brand

Media monitoring is so much more than just tracking keywords and mentions. It’s an essential component of any modern-day business strategy, helping you and your team identify new PR and marketing opportunities, assess your brand’s perception via brand tracking online, avoid crises, and keep track of your competition.

Download our free guide Media Monitoring Guide for details on:

How media monitoring serves different teams within your organization

Don’t wait to start strengthening your customer acquisition methods, improving your marketing efforts, and generating positive PR through media monitoring.

Media monitoring goes beyond tracking mentions. How to build a media monitoring strategy and use this powerful tool for business success.

The Ultimate Guide to Media Monitoring

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Document-level sentiment is no longer enough, here’s what to do instead.

Traditional sentiment analysis was built for a simpler media landscape. Today, conversations are complex, multi-entity, and full of nuance. 

This co-authored white paper from Meltwater and Converseon explains why organizations must move beyond document-level sentiment to entity- and aspect-level analysis to unlock more accurate, actionable, and AI-ready insights.

Download the white paper to learn how leading brands, researchers, and communications teams are closing critical insight gaps and future-proofing their analytics.

In Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis, you’ll discover:

Why document-level sentiment creates blind spots in modern media and social analysis

How entity-level sentiment reveals who or what sentiment is actually about

How aspect-level sentiment uncovers the specific drivers shaping perception

Real-world examples showing how mixed sentiment is misclassified, and how granular models fix it

Why granular sentiment is becoming essential for AI accuracy, explainability, and governance

How entity- and aspect-level approaches improve recall, precision, and actionability

This report is designed for professionals who rely on sentiment data to guide decisions, including:

Social listening and media intelligence teams

Market research and insights professionals

Data, analytics, and AI governance leaders

If accuracy, transparency, and actionability matter to your work, this paper is for you.

Through Meltwater’s partnership with Converseon, research-grade NLP models and attitudinal analytics are integrated directly into Meltwater’s enterprise social intelligence capabilities, enabling deeper insight without sacrificing scale.

The result is a practical, evidence-based guide to the next evolution of sentiment analysis.

Download your report on Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis

Why organizations must move beyond document-level sentiment to unlock more accurate, actionable, and AI-ready insights.

Getting Granular with Sentiment Analysis

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AI is rewriting how brands get discovered

Buyers aren’t browsing anymore — they’re asking AI.

And AI isn’t just finding answers… it’s deciding which brands show up, how they’re described, and who gets trusted.

This report reveals what’s actually happening behind the scenes — and why LinkedIn has become one of the most influential sources shaping AI-generated answers.  And most brands are not prepared for how that changes visibility.

AI is prioritizing expertise, relevance, and structure.

Turn your LinkedIn content into an AI visibility engine

The brands winning in AI aren’t just publishing more, they’re activating their experts. This report shows how to:

Track where your brand appears in AI-generated answers

Identify which sources shape your narrative

Measure how your content performs across AI models

Analysis of 9.5 million AI citations reveals LinkedIn’s growing influence in AI-generated answers.

Analysis of 9.5 million AI citations reveals LinkedIn’s growing influence in AI-generated answers and how brands can create content that gets cited.

How LinkedIn Powers the Answers AI Gives the World

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How LinkedIn Content Wins in AI Search

This new Meltwater Intelligence Report explores how public conversation, social platforms, and AI driven search are reshaping trust and reputation in the Australian insurance sector.

With insights drawn from nearly 5,000 media and online conversations across a 90 day period, ‘The Trust Gap’ reveals how customer perception is formed in moments of friction, uncertainty, and silence, and why insurers are often absent from the conversations that matter most.

Trust is no longer owned by brands: It is shaped across forums, social platforms, and AI generated summaries, often without brands being present in the conversation.

Frustration doesn’t build, it spikes: Claims related issues spread quickly across social channels before reaching mainstream media, shaping perception in real time.

Small moments can become big narratives: Individual experiences can escalate rapidly, turning into broader sector wide conversations about fairness and trust.

Uncertainty fills the gaps: When information is fragmented across media, influencers, and AI generated sources, customers are left to interpret conflicting signals.

Influence now sits with the crowd: Creators, communities, and AI systems are redefining how insurance products are understood, beyond traditional brand control.

If you are not visible, you are defined by others: AI generated search is driven by earned media and open web sources, meaning third party content shapes how your brand is represented.

Download the full report to understand what makes Australians trust, question, and choose their insurance providers today.

The Trust Gap: Reputation in Australian Insurance

The Trust Gap: What Public Conversation Reveals About Reputation in Australian Insurance

How LinkedIn Content Boosts Brand AI Visibility

Why AI platforms trust LinkedIn content

Getting your LinkedIn content cited

Do you know how the top AI platforms talk about your brand when your customers are researching buying decisions? GenAI Lens helps you track, measure, and improve your brand’s AI visibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

Exclusive research reveals the power of LinkedIn. Read the report and watch the on-demand webinar

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How to optimize  your LinkedIn strategy for AI search

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

Generative AI has transformed the way marketing and communications teams create content, research topics and answer questions. But while today's AI is powerful, it is only as useful as the context it has. Without access to your organisation's data and business context, AI often delivers generic responses and relies on separate manual workflows to provide the context it needs.

A new open standard called Model Context Protocol (MCP) is rapidly reshaping the generative AI landscape. By enabling AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot to securely connect with business systems, MCP unlocks a new generation of AI that can work with trusted data, not just public information.

Watch this webinar as we explore why MCP is emerging as one of the most important developments in today’s generative AI landscape, what it means for the future of marketing and communications intelligence, and how connected AI will transform the way teams discover insights, analyse conversations and make decisions.

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On-Demand Webinar: The Next Era of AI for Marketing & Communications Intelligence

Discover how AI-powered intelligence is transforming marketing and communications, helping teams turn media, social, and AI signals into action.

The Next Era of Marketing & Communications Intelligence

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Your next customer may never visit Google. They'll ask ChatGPT instead. As more people turn to AI assistants for answers and recommendations, brands need a new approach to visibility.

In this virtual session, Meltwater Senior Director of Product Nate Pallen explores how large language models evaluate and recommend brands, why traditional SEO is no longer enough, and what marketers can do to improve their visibility in AI-generated responses. You'll also see a practical framework for understanding what's influencing your brand's AI visibility and where to focus first.

Why AI-driven discovery is changing brand visibility and how it complements traditional SEO.

The three drivers of AI visibility: Authority, Clarity, and Frequency.

How to identify what's limiting your brand's AI visibility using a practical framework and GenAI Lens.

How to build a phased roadmap to strengthen your visibility in AI-generated responses over time.

Watch the recording to learn how AI evaluates brands and leave with a practical framework for improving your visibility in AI-generated responses.

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On Demand Webinar: How to Build Brand Visibility in the Age of AI

Meltwater's Nate Pallen explains how AI evaluates brands and what you can do to improve AI visibility.

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