AI Has Made Media Pitching Noisier and Less Effective, Says Featured CEO Brett Farmiloe

Featured owns and operates HARO (Help a Reporter Out), the journalist request service running since 2008, and Connectively. The company has visibility across both sides of the exchange - the requests journalists post and the pitches sources send back.

Farmiloe said the pattern in that data is consistent. "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."

He traced the quality problem directly to the acquisition that brought HARO under Featured's ownership. "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."

The company's response was to make AI authorship visible rather than to prohibit it. "We run AI detection on every single pitch," Farmiloe said. "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 challenged a widely held assumption 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, describing a framework built on the HARO name - helpful, authentic, relevant and on time.

On measurement, he said the standard the market reports against is shifting. "In 2026, the metrics are changing. AI visibility scores are one thing that we're seeing more and more innovators measure against," Farmiloe said. "It's really around: Is my brand visible in AI and LLMs?" He described marketers moving their metrics "towards the new front page of the internet."

Asked what practitioners should take from the conversation, Farmiloe pointed away from tactics. "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."

The full episode and transcript are available at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2026/additional-insights/brett-farmiloe.