In our latest Quarterly Trend Report, we noted that after what many in the Australian media landscape described as a "torrid" 2025 — frozen budgets, cut retainers, cautious decision-making all round — the 2026 outlook is genuinely starting to shift. Brand investment is coming back. Marketing teams are getting the green light again.
But here's the catch: brands aren't just opening the floodgates. Every dollar is going to be scrutinised. Every channel will need to justify its place in the mix. And that's actually a conversation I welcome, because it's the one where PR tends to be misunderstood the most, and where the argument for it is, in my view, the strongest.
The PR problem: it looks like a vanity metric
I'll be honest. I get why PR gets written off. A logo on a media coverage report. A reach figure. A clipping from a magazine. On the surface, it can feel soft. Hard to pin to revenue. Hard to put in a spreadsheet next to your Meta ROAS.
And so when budgets get tight, PR is often the first thing on the chopping block. It's the line item that feels like a "nice to have."
That framing drives me a bit mad, because it fundamentally misunderstands what PR actually does.
PR isn't a vanity metric. It's a compounding asset.
Think about what a quality editorial placement actually represents. A journalist, with their own reputation on the line, decided your brand, your story, or your spokesperson was worth including in their publication. That's not paid for. That's earned. And it carries a completely different kind of weight with an audience than anything you can buy.
That's the credibility layer that PR uniquely provides. And in a world where consumers are increasingly sceptical of paid media, that layer matters enormously.
But credibility is just the beginning. Here's what else you're getting that rarely gets talked about.
The SEO dividend
Every time a reputable publication covers your brand and links back to your website, you're building domain authority. In Google's eyes, a backlink from a trusted media outlet is a signal that your site is worth ranking. Do this consistently over time, quality placements across relevant publications, and you are quietly building one of the most powerful long-term SEO assets a brand can have.
This isn't incidental. This is structural. It's the kind of SEO that you can't easily replicate by paying for it, and it compounds. A coverage piece from two years ago can still be driving organic traffic and search authority today. Your media coverage isn't just a moment, it has a long tail.
The AI search advantage (and this one's important right now)
This is the newer one, and I think it's massively undervalued in the PR conversation.
The way people search is changing fast. AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are increasingly the first place people go when they're researching a brand, a product, or a category. And here's the thing, those tools don't pull from your ad campaigns. They pull from the open web. From news articles. From editorial content. From trusted third-party sources.
If your brand is showing up in credible publications, being quoted in industry commentary, being featured in relevant media, you are building the data set that AI search tools draw from. You're shaping what gets surfaced when someone asks an AI assistant about your category or your competitors.
This is a genuine first-mover opportunity, and PR is at the heart of it.
The brand-building case that performance marketers ignore
I'm a big believer in the full marketing ecosystem, performance channels absolutely have their role. But we've come through a period where the pendulum swung hard toward short-term, measurable, performance-heavy marketing, often at the expense of the brand-building work that actually makes performance channels more effective.
Long-term brand equity drives down the cost of customer acquisition over time. When people already know who you are, already trust you, already associate you with the right things, your paid media works harder and costs less. PR is a major engine of that brand equity.
It's slow. It's cumulative. It's hard to attribute to a single sale. But that doesn't make it less real. It makes it more strategic.
And one more thing: the media flywheel
Quality PR coverage doesn't just sit in a media report. It becomes fuel for everything else. Your team shares it on LinkedIn. It goes into your investor deck. Your sales team references it in pitches. It becomes social proof on your website. A journalist features your Founder or CEO and suddenly, they're on a podcast the following month. Coverage begets coverage. The flywheel starts spinning.
This is why we talk about PR as an owned media amplifier; it feeds everything else in the mix.
So, what does this mean for 2026?
If your budget is thawing, my honest advice is this: don't just rush back to the channels that feel familiar and measurable. Take a moment to think about what's going to build something lasting, credibility, authority, search presence, and community trust.
PR, done strategically and consistently, does all of those things. It's not a vanity metric. It's one of the most compounding investments a brand can make.
The brands that used last year to sharpen their positioning are entering 2026 with serious momentum. The question now is: what are you building that will still be working for you in two years' time?
That's the real ROI of PR, and it's one worth fighting for in the budget conversation.
Luke is co-founder of Compass Studio, a PR and communications agency helping brands build lasting credibility through earned media and strategic storytelling. Want to talk PR strategy? Get in touch.