In a recent interview on Majestic's SEO in 2026 podcast series, Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, highlighted a significant shift in media outreach effectiveness. He noted that the proliferation of AI-generated pitches has made high-volume outreach less effective, with data from HARO and Connectively showing a clear trend toward quality over quantity.
"Less is more in 2026, in terms of being an outreach specialist," Farmiloe said. "What we've seen is that AI has made it incredibly easy to reach out to more people, and it's made it more noisy and less effective as a result." Featured owns and operates HARO (Help a Reporter Out), a 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 explained that the pattern in the 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 this quality problem directly to the acquisition that brought HARO under Featured's ownership, citing a decline in quality and trust within the system, largely driven by AI adoption.
To address this, Featured has implemented measures to make AI authorship visible rather than prohibiting 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 the conventional wisdom about response speed, stating, "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 described 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 Majestic's SEO in 2026.
