When I introduced the PESO Model© in 2014, it provided more than a framework—it fundamentally changed how organizations approached their marketing and communications strategies.
By weaving together paid, earned, shared, and owned media into a cohesive system, the PESO Model empowered us to create campaigns that were greater than the sum of their parts. As we approach 2030, this model isn’t just surviving—it’s poised for its next evolution.
In true Gini fashion, I thought I’d gaze into my Magic 8 Ball not just to predict the future of the framework but to continue to evolve it so we can take advantage of the technology and tools at our fingertips today.
Artificial intelligence is already reshaping content creation and distribution. Social media platforms are transforming into immersive digital spaces. Search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated at understanding user intent and context. Audiences are developing new expectations about how they discover, consume, and share information.
These changes are supercharging the PESO Model and making the core principle of integrated media as relevant as ever.
While the Magic 8 Ball doesn’t give me any more information than “most likely” and “you can rely on it,” we do have enough information right now to make decisions about the next five years.
Owned Media of the Future
While many view AI-powered search as a threat to owned media—some of the media see it as a threat to their very being—the reality emerging is far more nuanced—and promising.
Yes, Search Generative Experience from Google creates a pretty big shift in how people discover information, but it does not diminish the value of your owned media. It’s creating opportunities for deeper, more meaningful engagement.
The future of search isn’t just about providing quick answers—it’s about facilitating deeper exploration. As AI becomes more sophisticated at understanding user intent and context, it will excel at identifying when someone needs a quick fact versus seeking comprehensive understanding.
For brands, this means owned media will evolve from competing for surface-level search traffic to becoming the destination for those seeking depth and expertise.
To boot—and I know I’ve talked about this almost ad nauseam—but the emphasis on experience and expertise in your content (or E-E-A-T) is the name of the future game. And this is what we excel at.
By 2030, the most successful owned media strategies will seamlessly blend human expertise with AI capabilities. Picture subject matter experts using AI to explore new angles, identify emerging questions, and create more comprehensive content. Or you using AI to look at media trends and then create content topics that allow you to stay top-of-mind and at the forefront of industry news.
The key differentiator won’t be whether you use AI, but how effectively you use it to amplify human insights.
To do that, you want to think about how to use the experience and expertise around your brand (subject matter experts, thought leaders, executives, and even paid spokespersons) to create dynamic content spaces—or interactive knowledge hubs.
For instance, imagine your corporate blog uses AI to create personalized learning pathways through your content. It connects case studies, research, testimonials, and expert insights based on each visitor’s specific needs and interests.
Pretty cool, right? This is a vision I had in 2011 (and I was far too early for it). I wanted to build Spin Sucks into a site that put a person on a learning path, depending on where they were in their career and what types of skills they needed to obtain. It was too hard to do 14 years ago because it was all manual and would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build. Today, though? AI can do it all for us.
If you want to lead a website visitor through their personalized journey, focus on creating content that AI can’t replicate: original research, deep analysis, unique perspectives, and interactive experiences.
The winning strategy isn’t to compete with AI but to create content that it wants to reference and direct users toward.
Shared Media of the Future
Now let’s look at shared media, which we all know won’t look anything five years from now like it does today. Things move far too quickly in that realm, and our goal should be to keep up AND be strategic.
Right now, we’re experiencing gross AI-generated content (all you have to do is look at the comments section on LinkedIn to see that in play—it’s gross) and virtual AI influencers. I just read an article about these robots earning real money! It’s sort of hard to wrap your mind around.
While virtual AI influencers marked the beginning of synthetic media personalities, the future isn’t simply replacing human influencers with AI ones. History has shown us that human beings will move to wanting human authenticity combined with virtual creativity and AI capabilities.
As this happens, the social media algorithms will get smarter. Right now, if something shows up in your feed on LinkedIn, for instance, it’s because the algorithm deemed it interesting based on how many views it got and how long someone spent with the content.
Which is getting close to right, but just like anything else, the humans are gaming the system. I opened LinkedIn just the other day to find someone had compared his marketing strategies to a woman’s breasts.
Despicable! But it kept showing up in the feed because women were outraged, and others commented about how funny the correlation was. The algorithm will get smarter and stop promoting this kind of disgusting content.
Instead of pushing viral content, AI will help surface conversations and creators that add genuine value to specific communities. This shift means brands will need to focus less on triggering algorithms and more on fostering genuine community engagement. This means that human beings must stop trying to game the system.
The key to success in shared media during the next five years isn’t just experimenting with AI-generated content—it’s understanding how to blend human authenticity, AI capabilities, and community engagement to create genuine value.
Brands that can master this balance while maintaining transparency about their use of AI will thrive in the shared media space of 2030.
Earned Media of the Future
Last week, there was a post in the Spin Sucks Community about how Rand Fishkin has an unpopular opinion about how PR is the future of marketing.
Yes!
And sigh. I’ve been saying this for years. But by all means…when a man says it, let’s listen!
Now that I have that off my chest, he’s right (and so am I). He says that traditional media may be dead, but the diverse, distributed sources of influence have way more sway and power than the top-tier publications combined. He also talks about how the expertise and experience you create in your content will get you to the top of all the feeds.
That means that the earned media of the future isn’t about the death of traditional media relations; it’s about how we’re earning credibility in all locations where our customers and prospects hang out.
This means the review sites, podcasts, newsletters, social media, YouTube, LLMs, Google and Apple News, and even (gasp!) Reddit.
These are the places you should spend your earned media time: earn credibility with the content creators in those spots and you’ll find far more success than sending your news release to every beat reporter in the world.
Paid Media of the Future
Let’s talk about paid media, which, in the PESO Model, is less about advertising in the traditional sense and more about strategic amplification of your best content and ideas.
The future of paid media isn’t just about mastering AI-driven platforms or adapting to privacy changes—it’s about using paid strategies to extend the reach and effectiveness of your most valuable content. Think of paid media as the accelerator for your communications engine rather than a separate channel.
In the next five years, the most successful paid media strategies won’t start with ad creative—they’ll start with identifying your highest-performing content across owned and shared channels. AI will help spot which stories, insights, and conversations resonate most strongly with your audience and automatically amplify them to reach similar audiences at the right moment.
Imagine your thought leadership piece gaining traction in a specific industry segment. Instead of creating separate ad campaigns, your paid media strategy automatically kicks in to amplify that content to similar audiences across multiple channels. The AI doesn’t just target demographics—it identifies and reaches out to communities actively discussing related topics.
Sounds like a dream come true!
This evolution means paid media becomes less about interrupting audiences with ads and more about ensuring your best content finds its way to the people who will value it most. The key isn’t just reaching more people—it’s reaching the right people at moments when your content can add the most value to their conversations and decisions.
The brands that will excel in this new landscape are those that stop thinking about paid media as a separate strategy and start viewing it as an intelligent amplification system for their best ideas and insights. Success won’t be measured just in clicks and conversions, but in how effectively paid media helps you build and engage with valuable audience communities.
Most importantly, the most successful paid media strategies won’t operate in isolation. They’ll be deeply integrated with owned, earned, and shared media efforts, using AI to identify and amplify winning content across channels. This integration will create a feedback loop where insights from paid campaigns inform content strategy, community engagement, and media relations.
The brands that thrive in this new landscape won’t be those with the biggest ad budgets or the most advanced AI tools—they’ll be the ones that best combine technological capabilities with human creativity and strategic thinking. Success will come from using automation and AI to enhance rather than replace human decision-making while building deeper, more meaningful connections with audiences.
The PESO Model of the Future
As we think about how the PESO Model will evolve in the next five years, we anticipate it transforming from a framework of distinct media types into an intelligent, interconnected ecosystem.
For example, an expert insight shared on your blog (owned) might be amplified by AI to identify relevant journalists or influencers (earned), surface in personalized social feeds (shared), and inform targeted ad creative (paid).
Rather than simply automating this process, AI will enhance how we understand and activate the connections between paid, earned, shared, and owned media.
This will help you:
- Predict which owned content has the highest potential for earned media pickup
- Identify the optimal timing and platforms for shared media amplification
- Surface opportunities for paid support that maximizes organic momentum
- Create dynamic content that adapts across channels while maintaining message consistency
Our understanding of success will also evolve. The PESO Model of the future will leverage AI to provide deeper insights into how content and messages move through the customer journey.
This might include:
- Real-time tracking of message resonance across channels
- Predictive analytics for content performance and audience engagement
- Trust and authority metrics that combine traditional and emerging signals
- Cross-channel attribution that reveals true results as they related to business outcomes
This evolution strengthens the ability to create integrated communications strategies that deliver measurable results. By embracing new technologies and changing audience behaviors, the model isn’t just adapting—it’s becoming more powerful.
The Next Chapter for the PESO Model
As we look toward 2030, the PESO Model isn’t just surviving—it’s thriving. The core principle of integrated communications remains as powerful as ever, now enhanced by technologies that make it even more effective. The model’s strength has always been its adaptability; this next evolution promises to make it even more effective.
As you think about how your use of it will evolve in the next five years, consider this:
- Paid media transforms into strategic amplification, where AI helps identify and boost your most valuable content to reach the right audiences at the right moments.
- Earned media expands beyond traditional media relations into a rich ecosystem of authorities, experts, and community voices.
- Shared media evolves from content distribution to community collaboration, powered by AI that helps surface authentic conversations.
- Owned media becomes the foundation of verifiable expertise, where human insights and AI capabilities combine to create deeper value.
The communicators who will thrive in the future aren’t just those who adopt new tools—they’re the ones who understand how to blend technology and human expertise to create more meaningful connections with their audiences. The PESO Model isn’t just adapting to these changes—it’s providing the framework for leading them.
As always, I look at the opportunities we have in front of us surrounded by rainbows and unicorns. I love this business and I love how we’re able to make real differences. We’ll continue to do that by creating more authentic, effective, ethical, and measurable communications strategies. The future of the PESO Model isn’t about replacing what works—it’s about enhancing what already makes it powerful.
