Before the holidays, I was on a call with a client who was lamenting that artificial intelligence has completely upended their communications program. She told me that everything she knew about PR—and even the PESO Model©—has been completely upended, and she shared that she’s afraid her CEO will want to replace her and her team with a GPT.
I know it’s a real fear, but I spent the rest of the call helping her create an argument that AI can’t replace them. We discussed how it can enhance their work and make them more efficient, freeing up time to do more—all things compelling to a CEO. This is because, while AI has certainly changed how we execute our communications programs, the fundamentals remain the same.
The PESO Model still works exactly as designed, but we now have some fancy new tools to help us do our jobs better and faster.
The PESO Model: A Quick Refresher
For those of you who might be new here, the PESO Model takes the four media types—paid, earned, shared, and owned—and merges them to create authority and credibility for your organization. In 2025, that hasn’t changed. What has changed is how we can use AI to execute within each media type.
Let’s dig into how AI has affected each one—and how you can use it to your advantage without losing the human element that makes your communications program special.
Your Owned Media Just Got a Whole Lot Smarter
Right before the holidays, I took a quick break from my social media moratorium (which may last through the next four years) to check in with friends and family and to see what my niece is doing for her culinary school finals. As I was scrolling, I saw a post from a friend that essentially said she and her content team had been laid off because the publisher she worked for was going all in on AI. No more humans. They let them all go.
This is so incredibly shortsighted. Who here wants to read content written solely by AI? I will tell you that when our media monitoring picks up something where I’ve been quoted, and it’s been written by AI, I am so turned off. I won’t share it, and I don’t comment on it. So gross.
AI is an incredible tool for research, outlining, and even first drafts, but it cannot replace the expertise and personality that makes your content uniquely yours. And for a publisher? Holy moly. Depending solely on AI for your entire livelihood? They will regret that decision.
I use AI every day to help me research topics, find interesting angles, and even get a rough first draft on the page. But then the real work begins. That’s when I add my experience, my point of view, and as many cycling analogies as I can fit in.
The most successful owned media programs in 2025 will take a much more sophisticated approach to content creation. We’re using AI to scale our content production without sacrificing quality—it’s like having a research assistant who never sleeps and can instantly pull together relevant data and insights.
The Earned Media Game Has Changed
Remember when we used to spend hours building media lists and crafting the perfect pitch? Well, AI has certainly changed that process, but not in the way you might think.
Yes, we now have AI tools to help us identify the perfect journalists for our stories and suggest optimal pitching times. But what hasn’t changed is building real relationships with media contacts.
I had coffee with a journalist friend last week, and she told me she’s getting more pitches than ever, thanks to AI-powered PR tools. But you know what makes her open an email? A relationship with the person sending it. Also a really well-crafted pitch, but mostly knowing the sender.
And for all of you using AI to write your pitches, we can tell you’ve done that. It’s a starting point. It’s not where you end.
Shared Media Is Where AI Shines
AI tools can help us optimize our content, identify the best times to post, and even predict what content will perform best. But have you ever seen an AI-only social media account? It’s about as engaging as watching paint dry. Same with AI-written content.
The magic happens when you combine AI’s analytical power with human creativity and emotional intelligence.
One of our clients has completely transformed their social media approach. They’re using AI to analyze mountains of social data, identifying trends and opportunities before their competitors even notice them. Their content team uses AI to create basic social posts, but then they enhance everything with their unique brand voice and personality. They’ve even set up AI-powered monitoring that tracks conversations and sentiment in real time, allowing them to jump into discussions at exactly the right time.
But—and this is crucial—they’re still having real conversations, responding authentically to comments, and creating content that resonates on a human level. Because social media is still about being social. Weird, right?
Paid Media Is Where It Gets Interesting
With the death of third-party cookies, paid media has become more challenging—and more interesting. AI has become crucial in helping us target audiences and optimize our campaigns in real-time.
You can use AI to build better audience models using your first-party data—something that would have taken weeks to do manually. This will allow your campaigns to optimize automatically in real time and allow you to create ads that adapt based on how users interact with them.
But again, the strategy—knowing who to target, what message will resonate, and how to integrate paid media with your other efforts—still comes from human expertise.
The Heart of the PESO Model Gets Smarter
Integration in the PESO Model is where the real magic happens. It’s where all the pieces of the PESO Model come together to create something bigger than the sum of their parts. A decade ago, integration was manual and often based on gut instinct. Now, AI helps us see connections and opportunities we might have missed.
Let me give you a perfect example. We have a client struggling to get traction with their thought leadership content. They had great owned content, decent social engagement, some earned media hits, and a solid paid strategy—but everything felt disconnected.
When we implemented AI-powered analytics across their program, we discovered something fascinating. Their highest-performing blog posts weren’t just sitting on their website—they were sparking conversations on LinkedIn that their paid media team didn’t know about. Meanwhile, their PR team was pitching stories to journalists already engaging with their social content. Hello, left and right hands!
Now, their program looks completely different. When they publish a piece of thought leadership content, AI helps them identify which parts will resonate best on each social channel. It flags journalists and influencers already talking about similar topics, making earned media outreach more natural and effective. Their paid strategy amplifies the content already proving successful organically, and they can see exactly how each piece connects to drive results.
The key to successful integration in 2025 is understanding that AI isn’t integrating for us—it’s helping us see where and how to integrate more effectively. It’s showing us connections we might have missed and helping us time our efforts for maximum impact. But the strategy behind that integration? That still comes from understanding your business, your audience, and your goals.
So much opportunity!
Measuring PESO Model Success
One area where AI has truly transformed our work is measurement. Remember when we used to manually compile reports and try to prove the value of our work? I’m having flashbacks to my colleagues standing at my office door asking me how many times to multiply the circulation of a publication to get the number of media impressions.
How we measure success in 2025 looks dramatically different than even a year ago. For owned media, we’re not just tracking page views anymore—we understand exactly how people engage with our content, how long they spend reading, and how they move through our content journey.
More importantly, we can now draw direct lines between content consumption and business outcomes.
Earned media measurement, thankfully, has evolved beyond counting clips and measuring advertising equivalencies). Now, we can understand our true share of voice compared to competitors, including the sentiment behind that coverage. We can see how our messages get delivered and evolve as they spread through different media channels. And perhaps most importantly, we can track the actual effectiveness of that coverage on website traffic, lead generation, and even sales.
Social media metrics have moved way beyond likes and shares. We’re now able to understand complex engagement patterns, see how content performs across different platforms in real time, and measure the health of our communities in meaningful ways.
AI can help you do all of this—and more. I often marvel at what it notices that we do not, and it’s made us so much smarter. Learn how to use it to help you demonstrate results. When you do, I expect gifts for teaching you how to ease your pain.
Planning for PESO Model Success
Now, let’s talk about how to put all this into practice. Because having all these fancy AI tools is great, but without a solid strategy, they’re just toys.
You need a clear roadmap for AI integration. Start small with pilot projects in areas where you can see quick wins. Measure the results, adjust your approach based on your learnings, and then scale successful initiatives across your program.
Data quality is crucial—your AI tools are only as good as the data you feed them. Collect the right information, maintain its quality, and use it ethically and transparently. Remember, it’s a really smart intern. You have to teach it (prompt it) how to do things. Just like a smart intern, it needs time to learn.
Most importantly, build flexibility into your plans. The pace of change isn’t slowing down, and your 2025 strategy needs to be adaptable. As AI takes over more routine tasks, your team can focus on the things that really matter: strategic thinking, creative problem-solving, relationship building, and high-level counsel.
Your success will still depend on how well you understand your audience, craft compelling messages, and build real relationships with the people who matter to your organization. And don’t forget that at its heart, communications is still about connecting with people. And that’s something no AI can do on its own.
(And don’t forget, there is a PESO Model© GPT to help! Check it out here.)
