Earned Media is an outreach engine that gets your brand placed on the exact pages AI assistants cite when they answer questions in your category — then keeps watching those placements so your mentions stay live and keep getting cited.
The target list is not a guess. MentionFox regularly runs audits that ask AI assistants the real questions buyers ask in your category — things like "what are the best tools for X" or "who should I use for Y". For every answer, it records which websites the assistant cited as its sources. Over many audits, a clear picture emerges: a small set of domains get cited again and again, and those are the pages actually shaping what AI assistants recommend.
Each of those frequently-cited domains becomes a target. The more often a domain shows up as a cited source, the higher its leverage — because earning a spot on a page the assistant already trusts is the fastest way to get cited yourself. That is the compounding loop: the assistant cites the page, the page lists you, and the assistant starts citing you in the same answers. A target can also be added by hand when you know a page is high-leverage even if it has not been cited yet.
Once you act on a target, you move it along a simple four-stage path: not yet placed → in progress (you have opened the submission or started outreach) → sent (your pitch or submission is in) → landed (your brand is now on the page). The pipeline state at the top of the page shows how many targets you have, how many you have sent, and how many have landed.
Targets split into two kinds. Do-it-yourself listings — directories, aggregators, review sites, and code repositories — are ones you submit to yourself; the page just gives you the submission link and the inclusion criteria. Outreach targets — blogs, news outlets, podcasts, and newsletters — involve a real person, so for those MentionFox can draft you several ready-to-edit pitch variants to start from.
Earned media is coverage you earn rather than buy: a mention, a quote, a listing, or a write-up on a page someone else owns. In MentionFox, earned media is aimed at one specific outcome — getting your brand onto the pages that AI assistants trust and cite.
When an AI assistant answers a question, it does not invent its answer out of thin air. It leans on a small set of high-authority pages and frequently links to them. If your brand appears on one of those pages, you stop being invisible and become part of the answer itself. Earned Media is the workflow that gets you there, target by target.
Plenty of coverage never shows up in an AI answer. A mention on a low-authority page that no AI assistant cites does almost nothing for your AI visibility. The pages that matter are the ones already being pulled into answers in your category.
Earned Media works backward from those pages. Instead of chasing a generic media list, you start from the outlets that already shape the answers people get when they ask about your category — then earn your place on them. As placements accumulate across the most-cited pages, your brand's recommendation rate inside AI answers rises. That compounding effect is the whole point.
Every target moves through the same five stages, so you always know where each opportunity stands:
The target list is the heart of Earned Media. Each row is a page or outlet that AI assistants already cite in your category, scored by influence — how much that page shapes the answers people get.
Work the list top down. The highest-ranked targets are the ones where a placement does the most to lift your recommendation rate, so they deserve your first and best pitches. Lower-ranked targets are still worthwhile, but they move the needle less per placement.
Every target shows the writers and editors behind it, any warm-intro path that was found, and a tailored pitch draft ready to edit. Treat each row as a complete mini-brief: who to reach, how to reach them warmly, and what to say.
A warm-intro path is a discovered connection between you and the editor or writer behind a target page — a shared contact, a prior interaction, or a relevant overlap. It turns a cold pitch into a warm introduction, which lands far more reliably.
When a target shows a warm-intro path, use it. If the path is a shared contact, ask that contact for a short introduction before you pitch. If the path is a topic or event overlap, open your pitch by referencing it so the writer immediately sees why you are relevant to their beat. Targets without a warm path are still reachable — you simply pitch them directly with the draft Earned Media prepared.
For every target, Earned Media drafts a pitch built around a specific angle for that page and that writer. The draft explains why your story fits their beat, what is genuinely new, and the hook that earns the placement. Every claim in the draft is verifiable and cited, so you are never sending something you cannot stand behind.
The draft is a starting point, not a send-it-blind script. Read it, sharpen the angle in your own voice, add anything the writer would care about, and remove anything that does not fit. Then send it through your own email. You always preview and send each pitch yourself — nothing goes out automatically.
Landing a placement is not the finish line. Pages get edited, mentions get trimmed, and a write-up that cited you last month might not next month. Once a target reaches the Placed stage, Earned Media moves it into Monitoring and keeps watching that page.
Monitoring tells you whether your mention is still present and still being cited in AI answers. If a placement quietly drops off, you know — so you can follow up with the writer or shore up the relationship. The placement leaderboard ranks your won placements by influence, so you can see at a glance which earned mentions are doing the most work, and the recommendation-rate trend shows whether your overall AI visibility is climbing.
Earned Media drafts a tailored pitch for every target, so you start from a real first draft rather than a blank page. You edit it, make it sound like you, and send it from your own email. You always review and send each pitch yourself.
You can still pitch it directly using the prepared draft. Warm paths convert better, so lead with the targets that have one, but a strong, specific cold pitch on a high-influence page is still well worth sending.
Watch the Monitoring stage, the placement leaderboard, and the recommendation-rate trend. Together they show whether your mentions stay live, which placements carry the most influence, and whether your AI visibility is rising over time.
Earning a placement depends on the writer and the outlet, so timing varies. The advantage of Earned Media is that it points you at the highest-influence targets first and gives you a warm path and a ready pitch, so your effort goes where it pays off fastest.