Written by Marcela Balart

This month, PR Newswire released its Global State of the Press Release report, which looked at how AI is impacting earned strategies, content development, and search discoverability.  

For the first time since it began undertaking the survey in 2020, this iteration provides global insights from across the Asia Pacific and Europe, in addition to the original North American region. The survey collected responses from 985 communications professionals across these locations, including Australia.​ 

As the report shows, the global challenges of achieving media cut-through have been amplified in the APAC region due to increases in media release distribution, message fragmentation and, more importantly, the rapid proliferation of AI-driven content. 

Since the launch of AI platforms, IMPACT has experienced first-hand the evolution of earned media and have expanded our services to include AI-search visibility.   

With this in mind, we share the key findings from the report and share our top three strategies to boost media release effectiveness. 

1. Originality is key to cut-through  

From a local perspective, Australia sits in a region where media place greater emphasis on originality to determine newsworthiness. This also translates into the AI search space. In fact, 56 per cent of stories in the APAC region are categorised as original content, the leading focus of press releases out of the three regions.  

This means content that is insights-driven, rather than promotional will better position a brand as knowledgeable in order to achieve cut-through. Think thought leadership bylines, research, tips, and educational resources.  

In terms of content creation, APAC is the global leader when it comes to AI adoption for releases, with 65 per cent of the region’s respondents using generative AI regularly. This figure is higher than North America (48%) and Europe (63%).  

IMPACT is no stranger to AI adoption in line with our own AI policy.  

2. AI-search strategies drive discoverability 

The report found APAC organisations are leading the way in adopting AI-centric search strategies. With generative search overtaking traditional search, the region is adapting and leveraging AI the fastest in terms of optimising for natural language, SEO, visible structured content, and citations.  

For Australia, the media release is not merely tied to media outreach, it’s part of a larger AI content mix where clear language, scannable formatting, and keyword-rich headlines matter now more than ever. 

3. Leverage multimedia content as a means of amplification 

Video as a format is rapidly becoming a differentiator in APAC, with more than half (52%) of teams repurposing releases into short-form video, outperforming any other region.  

Teams are also amplifying media release messaging across social media (55%), blog posts and articles (33%), as well as infographics (17%). 

While all regions agree multimedia boosts engagement, its importance is heightened with AI models able to consume images, video and logos.  

Given APAC’s high adoption of technologies, multimedia enrichment is essential to remain competitive in AI indexing and search visibility. 

To learn more about how IMPACT can integrate AI into your earned strategy, contact Nicole at nicole@impactagency.com.au.