Media Intelligence Stories You Missed from February 2026

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.

Brandwatch and Blackbird.AI Win Contract

A consortium of media intelligence and narrative intelligence specialists has been selected to deliver a bespoke, AI-enabled capability for NATO. Brandwatch, a Cision company, and Blackbird.AI were chosen by the NATO Communications and Information Agency to build an Information Environment Assessment Capability combining media monitoring, sentiment analysis, and trend detection to support decision-making across the NATO enterprise. The solution draws on technology from across Cision’s portfolio, including Trajaan’s search intelligence, alongside specialist contributions from Osavul and Converseon.

Gartner Predicts Doubled PR Budgets

Gartner published its Communications Predictions for Chief Communications Officers, setting out five forecasts for senior communications leaders through to 2029. The report predicted that PR and earned media budgets would double by 2027 as AI answer engines replace traditional search, with earned media accounting for more than 95% of citations in AI-generated answers. It also forecast that 45% of CCOs would adopt narrative intelligence technologies for reputation monitoring by 2029. On measurement, Gartner set a headline target of 6% of communications budgets dedicated to data and analytics by 2029, compared to a current average of 2.9%, framing the gap as a competitive vulnerability for communications functions. This is pleasing news for media intelligence providers who have been arguing for better spend on measurement for some time.

Reddit expands partnership with Meltwater and Sprout

Reddit’s growing importance as a consumer intelligence source was confirmed when two of the sector’s leading platforms announced expanded data partnerships with the platform within five days of each other. Meltwater joined Reddit’s Official Data Partner programme, gaining access to public posts and comments from more than 100,000 communities; Reddit reported more than 121 million daily active users at the time of the announcement. Sprout Social followed with its own expanded partnership, adding Reddit engagement to its Smart Inbox, enabling direct subreddit publishing, and introducing filtered Reddit Listening capabilities.

Pulsar reports growth, and headcount reduction

Pulsar Group is one of the few publicly traded organisations in our industry, so it’s always interesting to delve into their financial reports. In its FY2025 trading update, Pulsar reported annual recurring revenue of £64.5 million, an increase of £3.9 million on the prior year. EBITDA saw a 13% growth, while net debt fell to £2.7 million. The group delivered £7 million in annualised cost savings, and reported that it had reduced its headcount by 22%. Pulsar Group’s portfolio includes Vuelio, ResponseSource, Isentia, and the Pulsar Platform.

Lilypath launched Authority Intelligence

Lilypath a new platform designed to help executives understand and optimise how AI systems interpret their professional credibility has been launched by former Omnicom PR Group CIO Erin Lanuti. The platform is built around Lilypath’s patent-pending Authority Intelligence technology, which analyses a user’s LinkedIn profile against the mechanics of LinkedIn’s 360Brew AI model. Lanuti co-founded the company alongside Dan Nestle, and Todd Grossman, former CEO of Americas at Talkwalker. The three bring together expertise spanning enterprise AI, digital communications strategy, and media intelligence.

Media Intelligence Product Updates

Here are some of the product announcements that caught our attention this month:

CreatorIQ expanded its BenchmarkIQ feature to six new markets, adding Colombia, Greece, Finland, Morocco, Norway, and Israel, while also integrating SafeIQ brand safety tools directly into the main platform and updating Instagram Reels earned media value calculations to incorporate view counts alongside engagement metrics.

Muck Rack launched its Media List Agent, described as the first AI agent purpose-built for media list building and pitch optimisation, with beta users reporting a 10% increase in pitch open and click rates and integration with Muck Rack’s Pitch Placement Impact Widgets to connect outreach activity directly to earned coverage outcomes.

CARMA launched LLM Analysis, a new service enabling communications teams to audit how their organisations appear in AI-generated answers across large language model platforms, identifying which earned media sources are most frequently cited, and mapping gaps between intended messaging and AI-generated narratives.

Roxhill introduced a Press Release Tracker that automatically connected releases sent through the Roxhill distribution tool with monitoring coverage, creating an instant Smart Folder with analytics on coverage volumes and journalist open rates, alongside a new forward planner aggregating awareness days, elections, financial dates, and major sporting events to support advance campaign planning.

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Media Intelligence Stories You Missed in February