The Invisible Funnel: How Earned Media Shapes the AI Discovery Journey

The SaaS buying journey used to start with Google, peer recommendations, analyst reports, advertisements and inbound marketing. Something visible. Something trackable.

That still happens. But it’s no longer the whole story.

Today, AI discovery is reshaping how buyers find and evaluate solutions. More and more buyers are asking generative engines like ChatGPT and Gemini to shortcut the search process. They don’t scroll through pages of results. They ask for the answer. And what they see first (who’s cited, who’s explained and who’s missing) is reshaping how solutions are discovered, evaluated, and prioritized.

And yet, most of that influence is completely invisible to traditional marketing analytics.

For instance, when a buyer types:

• “Who are the leading cybersecurity companies for ransomware?”
• “What are the top AI platforms for procurement?”
• “What software vendors help reduce Scope 3 emissions in our supply chain?”
• “What software vendors should I evaluate to improve regulatory compliance?

…they’re not being shown ads. They’re not seeing the latest LinkedIn carousel. They’re seeing what the model has learned. This increases the importance of earned media, which is one of AI’s most reliable sources, for AI discovery.

Why? Because earned media is public, vetted and it often includes authoritative expert commentary and brand associations, which is exactly what LLMs are trained to prioritize.

The Funnel You Can’t See — But Must Influence

This shift creates a new type of funnel:

If your brand isn’t part of the AI’s knowledge base, you’re already behind.

Earned Media: Your Shortcut to Generative Visibility and AI Discovery

Most B2B tech companies think about earned media in terms of logos, credibility, and traffic – and those still matter. But in the age of GenAI, earned visibility has a second, critical job: training the engines your buyers rely on. When your company is cited in a top-tier publication, quoted by an expert source, or mentioned in a relevant trade article, it’s not just building brand equity, it’s training AI models.

LLMs treat these references as high-authority signals. That means every earned hit increases your chances of being cited, summarized, and recommended, especially for complex or niche queries like “AI platforms for demand forecasting” or “best cybersecurity providers for manufacturing.” In other words, earned media is now one of the fastest ways to climb the invisible funnel and boost AI discovery.

In fact, according to MuckRack, over 95% of links cited by GenAI tools come from non-paid sources (news articles, corporate blogs, press releases, etc.) and 27% are from news articles specifically. That number jumps to 49% when the LLM query asks for recent updates (e.g., “what are the latest tech advancements for supply chain management?”) – and the percentage is highest in the tech industry.

Call to Action for B2B Marketers: Influence the Untrackable

The brands that win in the next 18 months won’t just have strong paid and owned strategies. They’ll have intentional earned visibility strategies that consistently feed the very systems their buyers trust most.

That makes partnering with a top tech public relations agency, like Corporate Ink, more important and impactful than ever.

The bottom line: Generative AI discovery is happening. And it’s going to accelerate from here on out. The question is: Are you part of the dataset that shapes it?