Digital PR in 2026: Industry Review and Opportunities

The Digital PR (DPR) landscape is constantly reinventing itself, and 2025 was no different. The industry saw some big shifts, from shrinking newsrooms to the use of AI, causing PR professionals to adapt faster than ever.

However, with changes and challenges come new opportunities and strengths, such as further integration and the ability to showcase impact.

In this blog, our DPR team reflect on the industry’s key challenges and positive aspects they faced and touch on the exciting opportunities they anticipate for 2026.

The Biggest Digital PR Challenges of 2025

The Digital PR industry faces frequent challenges, whether it’s breaking news derailing a pitch, or proving the value of DPR to stakeholders. This industry can often be tricky to navigate.

Lack of Journalist Engagement and Shrinking Newsrooms

In 2025, a major challenge we’ve encountered has been the continued decline of journalists, resulting in a lack of engagement when pitching. According to Muck Rack’s 2025 State of PR Measurement Survey, 39% of PR professionals cited this as a key challenge for them this year.

Having fewer journalists to pitch to makes this already competitive landscape even more difficult. It’s much harder for us to build relationships or gain any real feedback that could improve our pitches and know what types of stories they’re looking for. 

Martin Black, Digital PR Account Manager, shared his experience with this: 

“The lack of journalist engagement has been a real struggle this year. You can pitch what feels like the perfect story to highly relevant journalists and still get no response. We know they’re busy, but even small pieces of feedback about what they’re looking for would be incredibly valuable.”

Emilia Beck, Digital PR Account Executive, added:

“Many of my pitches have high open and click-through rates, which can show journalists are interested, but they still don’t pick the story up. It’s frustrating, but we make sure to personalise our pitches, adjusting angles and tailoring our pitches, and hope one lands.”

Unethical AI Use Affecting Trust

Although AI offers certain opportunities for PRs (more on this later), it has also introduced significant challenges for the industry, particularly around trust. AI can streamline content production, but when used unethically, it undermines the credibility of stories, especially expert-led ones.

Some PRs use AI to rapidly generate content, often getting a head start over those who spend time creating credible, high-quality content when pitching. 

Quality has always been central to our work; we produce all content ourselves, and this remains crucial when sharing stories with journalists.

However, AI has intensified the pressure around reactive opportunities. Because it can churn out comments instantly, the expectation for PRs to respond at lightning speed has grown. When factoring in client response time and assessing content for quality, it can take longer than is often expected.

A more serious issue has been the rise of AI ‘experts’. Some PRs have been caught submitting AI-generated expert comments and attributing the quotes to people who don’t exist. Understandably, this has made journalists much more cautious when receiving expert comments and insights.

Although we can verify our experts through real author pages or putting them into direct contact with journalists, the overall decline in trust makes it harder to build relationships, and journalists often favour bigger, well-known brands as a result.

Mikaila Storey, Digital PR Team Leader, shared her experience:

“I was speaking to a journalist about expert comments they needed for a story from one of our clients, a client whose expertise they’d used before. This time, the journalist asked to speak to the expert directly, saying they needed a call just to confirm they were a real person because of the rise in PRs using fake experts via AI!”

Landscape of PR Stories Changing

In 2025, it has become increasingly clear that the types of PR stories that journalists want are shifting. In the past, expert and data-led stories were the go-to, but this has changed.

While unique data and real experts remain valuable for the right narratives, journalists are now seemingly prioritising human interest stories, likely a reaction to the growing mistrust in expert commentary and inboxes overflowing with generic, data-heavy, AI-generated content.

Human stories provide authenticity, emotional resonance, and narrative depth that AI can’t replicate. Whilst this isn’t necessarily a direct challenge, it can be difficult to produce these human-interest stories if they aren’t suitable for your client’s services or products.

Chrissie Wood, Digital PR Account Manager, discussed her experience: 

“With the oversaturation of AI slop across social media, it can feel impossible to know what’s real. Journalists are looking for more human-led stories to increase trust with readers and add another layer of connection that is missing from AI-generated content.

We’re seeing this trend through a rise in human interest journo requests for stories focusing on real experiences, and more articles presenting expert commentary in the first person, emphasising the expert’s humanity.”

We’ve also found that clients in niche industries are performing better this year. These clients allow us to craft more specific, less generic stories supported by specialised expertise or bespoke data. Journalists tend to view niche stories as more authentic and distinctive.

While this is a positive outcome for those clients, we’ve found it difficult to achieve the same results for brands in more competitive, less niche industries. Whereas, previously, we’d found it much harder to generate interest for those niche topics.

However, this is also likely a result of the decreasing staff members at the major publications who would have typically covered the broader news stories.

The Biggest Digital PR Positives of 2025

Although it can feel like it at times, it’s not all doom and gloom in DPR! In fact, 2025 has brought several positive developments across the industry.

Understanding the Importance of Brand Awareness

This year, the value of brand awareness has become far more widely recognised. Clients and stakeholders increasingly understand that strong brand presence is essential for earning coverage and supporting SEO.

This shift has made setting expectations for campaign results much easier, with clients showing more patience and acknowledging that brand building is a gradual process.

This change is likely influenced by Google’s growing emphasis on brand signals, as well as AI Overviews placing more weight on brand presence and sentiment.

Mikaila shared her perspective:

“In the last year or so, client retention for DPR has definitely increased, and we feel a big part of this is due to an improved understanding of brand awareness. In the past, I think there was an over-emphasis on immediately receiving a high volume of links.

But now, an appreciation of the importance of brand building and understanding how long the process takes has grown. Our own expectation management has played a role, but the wider industry has also put much more emphasis on why brand awareness matters.”

Integration With SEO

The benefits of DPR and SEO working together have become increasingly recognised over the past couple of years, and it’s a given now that SEO and DPR teams should be working together. 

DPR can boost SEO by gaining quality, relevant backlinks and coverage, which help to improve a website’s authority. The increased brand awareness earned through DPR is another important SEO factor, helping to drive organic traffic and generate trust.

Having a website that is effectively optimised for SEO will also support the DPR, increasing the chances of campaigns being picked up. Optimised content is often easier to find, which could result in journalists including it in their piece when researching.

Journalists are also much more likely to link to a more authoritative site. Additionally, SEO data can help inform DPR campaign ideas with keyword research that highlights the hot topics on people’s minds.

Both SEO and DPR are important for AI overviews, too. SEO content that matches the user’s search intent could be shown in AI overviews and LLMs, and Digital PR coverage can boost the chances of relevant blogs being featured and brands being cited as experts.

Martin shared his experience:

“I’ve worked on a range of integrated Digital PR and SEO clients, and the benefits of these teams working together are extremely clear! Even just down to internal meetings, making sure both teams are aware of what each other are working on, and integrated reporting makes a huge difference.

Many of my clients have seen an increase in domain rating and authority due to achieving relevant, high-quality coverage. We’ve also seen more relevant, engaged users on the site, due to both SEO blogs and Digital PR coverage targeting the right audience. Also, if a website has good SEO, this will increase our chances of being covered. No journalist wants to feature a site that isn’t user friendly or looks untrustworthy.”

Showing the Value of Digital PR to Clients

Towards the end of 2024, we enhanced our DPR reports to provide clearer, more comprehensive value to clients. Demonstrating the impact of DPR has long been a challenge for the industry, largely due to its unpredictability. However, our newly developed quarterly reports have become a major strength in 2025.

In-depth insights, such as Share of Voice, coverage metrics, and branded search trends, help illustrate the broader value of DPR beyond just link counts. These metrics also highlight the role DPR plays in supporting SEO.

With more in-depth reporting, clients now have a much clearer picture of how our work strengthens both their brand and organic performance, rather than relying solely on link quantities, which are increasingly viewed as an outdated measure of success.

Links still matter, of course, but quality, relevance, brand impact, and SEO contribution now carry far more weight.

Martin shared his experience:

“I’ve definitely found it a lot easier to show Digital PR value to clients this year, something that industry-wide can be a struggle. My clients seem to understand that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to coverage and links, and I’m able to show that quality using a range of metrics.

Being able to use MuckRack has been a big help, as their reporting tools really support our Digital PR reports and help demonstrate the full value of our work.

Also, the integrated work and being able to report on this shows value and the benefits of integration further. ”

Digital PR Opportunities For 2026

With the DPR industry changing often, this presents us with new opportunities we can focus on in the coming year.

Using AI Ethically and Effectively

As we’re all aware, AI is an increasingly developing tool, with many in the industry currently figuring out how to use it to their advantage. Although there is a lot of speculation and uncertainty around AI, there is also a lot of opportunity.

As mentioned previously, we know that brand awareness can support businesses being featured in AI overviews and LLMs, which means DPR is even more necessary. There’s also an opportunity for us as a team and an industry to develop our reports to cover AI and show further value.

Mikaila shared her insight on this:

“There is so much opportunity with AI for Digital PR. The development of AI shouldn’t change the way we work too much. Our mission remains the same: to gain high-quality, relevant coverage for clients that increases brand awareness and authority, and supports SEO.

However, the development of AI allows us to report on AI metrics and show further value. Brand is an important factor of AI overviews and LLMs, which in itself presents an opportunity for Digital PR to make a real difference.

Clients are realising the impact Digital PR can have on AI metrics and are keen to see it in reports, which is great for us!”

Wider Integration for Maximum Impact

As mentioned previously, the benefits of integrating SEO and DPR have become increasingly clear, and we can definitely see this expanding further. With brand awareness now playing such a central role, there’s a much broader opportunity for collaboration across multiple marketing departments.

Bringing together DPR, SEO, social media, PPC, and other channels can significantly amplify impact. For example, repurposing a DPR campaign, especially one supported by on-site content, across social platforms or within PPC ads can increase overall traffic, strengthen brand awareness, and reach new audiences.

This cross-channel approach ensures that strong content delivers value far beyond its initial PR placement.

Chrissie commented: 

“Audiences are more split than ever before, with various platforms to choose from and personalised algorithms. We’re in a world where a TikTok video can have far more exposure than coverage on one of the most prestigious online newspapers.

While the latter is still highly valuable, finding ways to rework your content to suit various platforms allows you to widen your reach and maximise engagement. Collaborating with and using the expertise of your social media teams, clients, and SEO departments can increase your Digital PR content’s impact.”

Utilising Multimedia Assets in Campaigns

Looking ahead to 2026, we foresee more opportunities to use multimedia assets in our pitches and content. 

With attention spans shrinking and journalists seeking visually engaging content, assets like video and interactive tools can dramatically increase the success of PR campaigns. These formats instantly add depth, clarity, and shareability, making pitches more compelling.

For clients, integrating multimedia across DPR, social media, and on-site content can help to strengthen brand presence and improve user engagement, offering a more holistic and future-facing approach to storytelling in 2026.

Chrissie commented: 

“Video content has become increasingly important for online news, with users wanting to consume information quickly and publications needing shareable content for other platforms. Therefore, video has become a key component for pitching stories.

We’ve had journalists explain that they need to include a relevant video for any SEO content, such as our client discussing the subject explored in the piece, which can also increase the trust around them as an expert.”

Final Thoughts

Wrapping up 2025, it’s clear that DPR is evolving faster than ever. The challenges faced in 2025 have pushed our team and the industry in general to adapt and rethink. However, these challenges have fuelled some of our biggest strengths, such as SEO integration and developed reporting. 

We’re excited for 2026, with plenty of opportunity to continue to develop and strengthen our services and show value even further via reporting. Although DPR is very unpredictable and changes constantly, one thing remains constant: brands that prioritise quality, relevance, collaboration and authenticity come out on top. 

If you want to invest in your brand and bring on Digital PR in 2026, please get in touch!