February saw the signing of a NATO contract by a Brandwatch and Blackbird.AI consortium, while Gartner’s Communications Predictions report defined how CCOs should be thinking about AI answer engines, measurement budgets, and disinformation risk through to 2029. On the financial side, Pulsar Group’s FY2025 trading update confirmed growth. Lilypath, a platform founded by senior alumni of Omnicom, Talkwalker, and the PR technology community to help executives understand and manage how AI systems interpret their professional authority.
January brought a significant development in industry collaboration with the launch of MT Connect, a platform enabling media monitoring organisations to trade content across markets, while research from Cision, Meltwater and the Reuters Institute all highlighted the impact of AI. The Edelman Trust Barometer revealed 70% of people globally have retreated into an “insular mindset”, unwilling to trust those with different values, and publishers told Reuters Institute they expect search traffic to plummet 43% over the next three years as AI answer engines reshape content discovery.
It was another year of consolidation, with Adobe’s acquisition of Semrush, Cision purchasing Trajaan to complete its August partnership with Brandwatch, Muck Rack picking up Ruepoint in January, Dataminr’s $USD 290 million acquisition of ThreatConnect, and Sprout Social’s $USD 55 million purchase of NewsWhip. Major funding rounds are also lining up to reshaped the competitive landscape, including Signal AI’s $USD 165 million investment led by Battery Ventures, and Cision’s debt restructuring.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) emerged as the year’s defining trend, with Meltwater, Muck Rack, Brandwatch, Notified and Trajaan among the many providers launching AI search monitoring capabilities to track brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other large language models. The battlefield for 2026 will centre on AI search dominance, as vendors race to perfect GEO measurement capabilities and demonstrate ROI from monitoring how AI platforms reference brands. More significantly, Adobe’s Semrush acquisition and the integration of search intelligence across platforms marks a convergence point between PR and marketing measurement that will reshape how organisations structure their communications functions and technology stacks throughout 2026.
