In a recent interview on Majestic's SEO in 2026 podcast, Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, highlighted a significant shift in media outreach effectiveness. Featured, which owns and operates HARO and Connectively, has observed that the proliferation of AI-generated pitches has made the landscape increasingly noisy and less effective for both journalists and sources.
Farmiloe emphasized that the era of high-volume outreach is over. "Less is more in 2026, in terms of being an outreach specialist," he said. "What we've seen is that AI has made it incredibly easy to reach out to more people, and it's made it more noisy and less effective as a result." Instead, the winning approach now centers on 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."
The decline in quality can be traced back to the adoption of AI within the industry. Farmiloe noted, "The reason why HARO ended up in our ownership in the first place was a decline of quality and trust within the system, and a lot of that was targeted through the adoption of artificial intelligence." To combat this, Featured has implemented AI detection on every pitch submitted through its platforms. "We run AI detection on every single pitch," he explained. "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. If it's 100% AI-generated, the journalists will see that. They've got a one-click filter to opt out of those pitches entirely."
Farmiloe also addressed common misconceptions about response speed. "It's not necessarily being the first in line, but it's being at the top of the line with the best credentials and the most helpful response," he said, outlining a framework built on the HARO acronym: helpful, authentic, relevant, and on time.
For marketers, the shift in metrics is profound. "In 2026, the metrics are changing. AI visibility scores are one thing that we're seeing more and more innovators measure against," Farmiloe noted. "It's really around: Is my brand visible in AI and LLMs?" He described how marketers are moving their metrics "towards the new front page of the internet," where AI-generated answers increasingly shape consumer and B2B decisions.
Ultimately, Farmiloe's advice for practitioners is to focus on sharing valuable knowledge. "The key takeaway is that you have knowledge to share, and that knowledge is highly valued by journalists and publications. Find a way to share that knowledge, and if you share your knowledge in a meaningful way, it will benefit your business."
For those interested in the full discussion, the episode and transcript are available at Majestic's SEO in 2026.
