In a recent interview on Majestic’s SEO in 2026 podcast series, Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, said that AI has made media pitching noisier and less effective. Farmiloe, whose company owns HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and Connectively, has unique visibility into the media pitching ecosystem, seeing both journalist requests and source responses.
“Less is more in 2026, in terms of being an outreach specialist,” Farmiloe said. “What we’ve seen is that AI has made it incredibly easy to reach out to more people, and it’s made it more noisy and less effective as a result.”
The data from his platforms supports this observation. “The outreach that I’m seeing winning on our platforms is the folks who aren’t sending out a higher volume of pitches, but they’re sending out a higher quality of pitch,” he explained.
Farmiloe traced the decline in quality to the adoption of AI, which was a key factor in HARO’s acquisition by Featured. “The reason why HARO ended up in our ownership in the first place was a decline of quality and trust within the system, and a lot of that was targeted through the adoption of artificial intelligence.”
In response, Featured has made AI authorship visible rather than prohibiting it. “We run AI detection on every single pitch,” Farmiloe said. “We’ll run a quality score on every pitch that goes through our platform – whether that’s HARO, whether that’s Connectively – and we’ll allow journalists to see those scores. If it’s 100% AI-generated, the journalists will see that. They’ve got a one-click filter to opt out of those pitches entirely.”
Farmiloe also challenged the notion that being first to respond is most important. “It’s not necessarily being the first in line, but it’s being at the top of the line with the best credentials and the most helpful response,” he said, describing a framework based on the HARO acronym: helpful, authentic, relevant, and on time.
On measurement, Farmiloe noted that the metrics are evolving. “In 2026, the metrics are changing. AI visibility scores are one thing that we’re seeing more and more innovators measure against,” he said. “It’s really around: Is my brand visible in AI and LLMs?” He described marketers moving their metrics “towards the new front page of the internet.”
Asked for key takeaways, Farmiloe emphasized the value of knowledge sharing. “The key takeaway is that you have knowledge to share, and that knowledge is highly valued by journalists and publications. Find a way to share that knowledge, and if you share your knowledge in a meaningful way, it will benefit your business.”
The full episode and transcript are available at Majestic’s SEO in 2026.
