Earned media in the age of AI answers.
We went through over 1.3 million citations in AI answers to see which media ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity read when B2B tech buyers ask for advice. We expected the big national titles to lead. When buyers are choosing a supplier, it's the trade press that does.
- Citations
- Over 1.3 million, over 11 months
- AI answers
- Almost 190,000
- Brands
- 116 in B2B technology
- Assistants
- ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and more
We expected the national headlines to matter most.
Most PR plans still put the big national titles at the top of the list, and we assumed AI would read the same way. Media turned out to be a small slice of what assistants cite, about one citation in 25. Most of the rest comes from company websites. Within that slice, though, the pattern was clear, and it wasn't the one we expected.
- 3 in 4
- media citations on buying questions come from trade and specialist titles
- 2 in 3
- media citations on reputation questions come from the national press
- 6 of 20
- top media titles are shared by ChatGPT and Gemini
- 9 months
- is roughly how old a trade article is when AI cites it
Source: Resonance analysis of Agentcy AI visibility data, October 2025 to September 2026.
When buyers are choosing, AI reads the trade press.
Ask an assistant which platforms to shortlist, or how two products compare, and about three quarters of the media it cites are trade and specialist titles. That makes sense when you think about it. A national paper might mention a vendor once a year. Computer Weekly or CIO covers the category every week, in the kind of detail an assistant needs to tell products apart.
Share of media citations. We counted over 750 trade and specialist titles in the answers, compared with fewer than 120 national ones.
National press still owns the questions about who you are.
Change the question and the reading list changes with it. When someone asks about a company's values, its leaders or its public profile, the national and business titles come back, with about two-thirds of the media citations. These answers also draw on a much shorter list: a handful of big names do most of the work, where a vendor evaluation can pull from hundreds of titles.
Each assistant has its own reading list.
We half expected the assistants to agree on which media to trust. They don't. ChatGPT leans heavily on national and tech press, while Gemini and Perplexity read far more trade titles. Of each one's 20 most-cited titles, ChatGPT and Gemini have only six in common. So if your buyers use more than one assistant, and most do, one kind of coverage won't reach all of them.
Claude, Copilot, Grok and Google's AI search features are in the totals, but we didn't have enough of their answers to profile them separately.
These are the titles AI cited most.
Ranked by citations across every assistant and question. Treat it as a starting point. It reflects the markets we track, which lean towards enterprise software, fintech, security, AI and sustainability, so we've left out two sector titles that only ranked high because of that mix. Your own list is worth building from the questions your buyers actually ask.
Trade and specialist
- TechTarget
- CIO
- ITPro
- Computer Weekly
- FinTech Global
- AI Magazine
- Supply Chain Digital
- CRN
- Sustainability Magazine
- Automation Today
Tech news
- TechCrunch
- TechRadar
- VentureBeat
- SiliconANGLE
- The Register
- Tom's Hardware
- The Verge
- InfoQ
- Wired
- HPCwire
National and business press
- TIME
- Forbes
- Axios
- Business Insider
- The Guardian
- Fortune
- AP
- Bloomberg
- Observer
- CNBC
Trade articles keep working for months.
Tech news gets cited while it's fresh, usually within a few weeks. Trade articles hang around. The typical one was about nine months old when an assistant cited it, and plenty were more than a year old.
Media's share of citations also moved during the year. It peaked at nearly 7% in February and dipped below 3% over the summer, when assistants leant harder on company websites, before climbing back to about 4% in September.
- 18 days
- typical age of a tech news article when AI cites it
- 8 weeks
- for the national and business press
- 9 months
- for trade and specialist titles (from a small sample of dated articles)
What we'd change in a B2B tech media plan.
None of this means dropping the national press. It does mean giving the trade a bigger share of the effort than most plans do.
Give the trade titles more time
Treat the specialist titles in your sector as a priority, with regular briefings, bylines and data they can use.
Build the list from real questions
Ask the assistants what your buyers ask, note which titles they cite, and target those. The list will be longer than a classic tier one.
Cover more than one assistant
ChatGPT reads more national and tech press, Gemini and Perplexity more trade. You'll want a bit of both.
Use the nationals for reputation
Company and leadership stories are where national coverage earns its place in AI answers.
Give journalists the detail
Assistants cite articles that explain how products compare and what they work with. Specific customer evidence and numbers help editors write those.
Check what gets cited
Look at whether your coverage turns up in AI answers, for which questions and on which assistant, as well as who read it.
Read it in full.
Eleven pages with the full charts, the top titles by type and how we did the analysis. It's free, and there's no form to fill in.
- Pages
- 11
- Format
- PDF, 0.8 MB
- Data
- Oct 2025 to Sep 2026
Explore it with AI. Ask an assistant what the findings mean for your own category.
Two more reports from the same data.
What AI reads before it recommends
Which kinds of pages AI cites, and what the most-cited ones have in common.
What AI gets wrong about B2B tech brands
The mistakes AI makes about B2B tech companies, and where they come from.
B2B tech PR, built for AI search
How we run media relations for technology companies, with AI visibility measured as we go.
Common questions about earned media and AI.
Which media do AI assistants cite most for B2B technology?
In our data the most-cited titles overall were TIME, Forbes, TechCrunch, TechRadar and Axios. In the trade press, TechTarget, CIO, ITPro and Computer Weekly led, with sector titles such as FinTech Global, AI Magazine and Supply Chain Digital close behind. Your own list will depend on your market.
Does trade media matter for AI search?
Yes. It's the media AI leans on most when buyers are choosing. On questions like vendor evaluations, product comparisons and compliance checks, about three in four media citations went to trade and specialist titles. The national press got roughly one in eight.
Do ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity cite the same media?
Not really. ChatGPT reads mostly national and tech press, while Gemini and Perplexity lean towards trade titles. ChatGPT and Gemini share only six of their 20 most-cited media titles, so coverage that shows up in one may not show up in the other.
Is national press coverage still worth it for B2B tech brands?
For your reputation, yes. When someone asks an assistant about a company's values, its leaders or its profile, national and business titles supply about two-thirds of the media it cites. For the question of which product to buy, the trade press does most of the work.
How much of an AI answer comes from earned media?
About 4% of citations point to a news, tech or trade title. Most of the rest are company websites. That small share is often the only independent view in the answer, which is why it's worth more than the number suggests.
How long does coverage keep getting cited by AI?
Longer for trade titles. In our sample, a typical trade article was about nine months old when an assistant cited it, and around four in ten were more than a year old. Tech news tended to be cited within a few weeks.
How was the research done?
We used Agentcy, our AI visibility platform, to collect over 1.3 million citations from almost 190,000 AI answers between October 2025 and September 2026. The answers came from buyer-style questions about 116 B2B technology brands. We sorted the cited websites into source types and split media into national and business press, tech news, and trade and specialist titles.
Want to know which titles your buyers' assistants read?
We can show you which media AI cites for your category, where you turn up and where your competitors do, and then help you build a media plan around it.
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