Curated News
By: NewsRamp Editorial Staff
August 08, 2026
HARO CEO: Quality Over Quantity in AI Era PR Outreach
TLDR
- High-quality, personalized pitches beat high-volume AI outreach, giving brands an edge in media visibility.
- Featured uses AI detection and quality scores on pitches, letting journalists filter out AI-generated content.
- Emphasizing authentic, helpful knowledge sharing builds trust between sources and journalists, benefiting all.
- HARO now labels AI-generated pitches and offers a one-click filter, reshaping how sources connect with media.
Impact - Why it Matters
This news matters because it signals a fundamental shift in how public relations and digital marketing will operate in the near future. For businesses and marketers, the days of blasting hundreds of pitches to journalists are numbered. Instead, the focus must turn to crafting personalized, high-quality pitches that stand out. Moreover, the emphasis on AI visibility scores means that companies will need to optimize not just for search engines but for AI models like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. This could redefine SEO strategies and how brands measure their online presence. For journalists, it offers a way to cut through the noise and receive more relevant pitches. Ultimately, adapting to these changes will be crucial for anyone looking to gain media coverage and maintain a strong digital footprint in 2026 and beyond.
Summary
In a revealing interview on Majestic's SEO in 2026 podcast, Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, declared that the era of high-volume media outreach is over. With the rise of AI, mass pitching has become easier but far less effective, leading to a noisy and cluttered inbox for journalists. Farmiloe, whose company owns HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and Connectively, has unique visibility into both sides of the pitch exchange. He notes that the data consistently shows that pitches winning now are those that prioritize quality over quantity. "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."
Farmiloe attributes the decline in quality to the adoption of AI, which led to HARO's acquisition by Featured. To combat this, Featured now runs AI detection on every pitch and provides journalists with a quality score, allowing them to filter out AI-generated content with a simple click. "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." He also dispels the myth that being first is best, emphasizing that being "at the top of the line with the best credentials and the most helpful response" is what truly matters. As we move into 2026, Farmiloe predicts that metrics will shift towards AI visibility scores, measuring brand presence in AI and large language models, which he calls "the new front page of the internet." The key takeaway, he stresses, is to share knowledge meaningfully, as journalists and publications highly value it. The full episode is available at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2026/additional-insights/brett-farmiloe.
Source Statement
This curated news summary relied on content disributed by Newsworthy.ai. Read the original source here, HARO CEO: Quality Over Quantity in AI Era PR Outreach
