Brands Are Betting Earned Media Will Shape AI Answers

Shoppers are handing more of the buying journey to AI, and brands from Balenciaga to e.l.f. Beauty are rebuilding around earned, third-party validation to influence what the models say about them.

More of every purchase now begins inside a chatbot, and the answer it returns is assembled from sources the brand does not own. Adobe’s Digital Insights team reported that AI-referred visits to US retail sites rose 393 percent year over year in early 2026, and that those visitors converted better than traffic from any other channel.

The commercial stakes are set. The open question for marketers is how a brand earns its way into an answer it cannot buy. The brands moving first share one hypothesis: the way to influence what a model says is to be present in the credible, third-party content it reads.

Balenciaga is buying its way into the content AI reads

Balenciaga acted on that logic, becoming the first fashion house to join Substack’s native sponsorship program, alongside launch partners including Uber, T-Mobile, and Yahoo Scout. The deal routes part of its media budget to independent writers rather than to the platform alone, through sponsored placements and affiliate links.

The reasoning runs deeper than reach. Independent publishers produce the kind of credible, text-heavy writing that language models draw on, and a presence inside that writing is harder to replicate than a paid impression. Backing the writers directly also buys a relationship with voices readers already trust, which is the quality models weight when they decide what to cite.

FashionNetwork read the move as a search play, arguing that models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini favor text validated by trusted third parties, and that Balenciaga is positioning for a future of AI-led discovery and agentic commerce. CEO Gianfranco Gianangeli framed it as an extension of the brand’s “long history of supporting bold voices across culture.” The commercial point sits underneath: organic reach on conventional social keeps falling, while written references on an independent publisher give a model something it can quote.

e.l.f. Beauty treats media coverage as an input to the models

The same thinking is reshaping how communications teams work. Samantha Critchell, VP of Corporate Communications at e.l.f. Beauty, told The Lead Summit that earned media is a priority again, since the stories outlets publish become part of what AI systems learn from. She described e.l.f. as deliberate about working with the media outlets whose coverage feeds those models, and about giving them the stories worth knowing.

“You say you’re training your models, we’re training our models for sure,” Critchell said, tying press coverage to the words and ideas e.l.f. wants attached to its name. She also counts YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit as media that shape what the models return.

Reddit shows why the source has to be human

Reddit frames the same logic around trust. Opening Shoptalk Spring 2026, CEO Steve Huffman argued that models regurgitate what already exists, and that Reddit is among the largest sources of training data. “You can’t have artificial intelligence without actual intelligence,” he said. His point for brands is that a chatbot cannot use a product or take a trip, so the lived experience shoppers want still has to come from people whose views a model can pull in.

In an interview with ClickZ at the same event, Anna Haffner, who leads Reddit’s retail and beauty partnerships, described what works. Brands succeed when they “contribute to the knowledge base” that high-intent users come for. She noted that third-party measurement, including Fospha, has shown higher ROAS when Reddit joins the mix, because it adds incremental reach among high-intent shoppers.

Earned credibility is becoming the lever for AI-era reach

The through-line across is the same. A model builds its answer from the sources it trusts, so a brand influences that answer by earning a place in them, whether through independent writers, editorial coverage, or genuine community presence. Owning a paid feed no longer guarantees a mention, and the credibility that earns one cannot be bought at the moment a shopper asks.

That reframes what brand building is for. Reaching an audience directly still matters, and now a brand also needs to be documented by the outlets, writers, and communities a model reads back to that audience on its behalf. The brands moving early are auditing where they already surface in AI answers and investing to be present in the sources that carry weight.

Earned credibility always had value. What has changed is that it now feeds the tool millions of shoppers consult before they buy.