Two threads ran through August’s news. The first was financial. A run of second-quarter results from Innodata, Sprout Social and ACCESS Newswire showed growth and change in strategy to reflect the rise of AI. The second was the accelerating race to measure brand visibility inside AI-generated answers. Cision, Onclusive and a wave of smaller entrants all staked fresh claims in GEO.
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AI search visibility set the agenda in July, from a run of new industry reports to Gartner’s first combined Magic Quadrant for social media management and listening. Muck Rack deepened its publisher partnerships, Onclusive teamed up with Cyabra to expose inauthentic narratives, and both Onclusive and Sprinklr installed new leaders.
This month Hootsuite, Signal AI, and Cihan Media all launched MCP connectors to support an agentic future. Similarly, platforms have embraced agents, with Truescope, Agility PR Solutions, and Zignal Labs unveiling multi-agent systems. Treasure Global’s USD 15 million social listening contract and Hootsuite’s portfolio-wide rebuild as Social OS signalled how quickly enterprise buyers are willing to fund this shift.
May was the month AI search analytics moved to centre stage, with Google overhauling Search at I/O while specialists like Onclusive, Peec and Grayling scaled up around it. The Dublin AMEC Global Summit delivered the industry’s first GEO measurement framework, and a wave of fresh research from Cision and Muck Rack reshaped the picture of how journalists and AI systems actually consume content.
In April, Hootsuite made headlines as founder Ryan Holmes returned as interim CEO. Meanwhile, PeakMetrics secured funding as narrative intelligence continues to attract serious investment, and Belgian monitoring company Auxipress picked up local player Euro Argus. And, Meltwater released a joint report with YouGov on how generative AI is reshaping consumer trust in brands.
Signal AI’s recent investment came in handy as it acquired Memo, bringing its readership data to Signal clients. Meanwhile, publishers are seeking new readers with several AI licensing deals, including a $USD 50 million per year AI licensing deal between Dow Jones and Meta. Product launches this month reflected the same AI-first momentum: from Onclusive launching a unified platform built on a single intelligence layer, to Muck Rack embedding AI visibility scores directly into media outreach workflows. It appears the industry is moving from experimenting with AI to embedding it at the operational core.
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.
November saw a hefty acquisition alter landscape, with Adobe agreeing to purchase Semrush, bringing the PR software platform Prowly into the Adobe ecosystem and signalling enterprise-level commitment to generative engine optimisation. The month also saw the UK’s NLA launching Newsworthy to provide article-level engagement metrics direct from over 500 news brands. Meanwhile, AMEC celebrated Measurement Month.