Cited · Edition 6 · 19 June 2026
What is Known & Cited? Known & Cited is a GEO consultancy and GEO-led PR partner. We measure how AI search cites and recommends brands, and help you change what it says.
Edition 6, here we go.
GEO is Generative Engine Optimisation, the unglamorous name for getting your brand mentioned by AI when someone asks it a question. It’s also called AI visibility, and many other things. I still can’t stand most news letters, so we’ll keep this short, and largely not about us.
Reading time: about 5 minutes. If this is useful, pass it on to someone who’d get something from it. And tell me what’s off, missing, or you want more of. Just DM me. Edition 5 is here if you missed it.
Russ
OpenAI activated its UK advertising pilot on 6 June. The UK is the first market outside North America, Australia and New Zealand to get ads inside ChatGPT, confirmed by OpenAI’s VP of Monetisation Benji Shomair and Global Head of Ads David Dugan. Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico are next. Ads only show for Free and Go users; Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay clean.
My take. Don’t panic. They’ll get better, they’ll get integrated more elegantly, that’s how every ad product on the internet has played out. My experience of it so far is fairly representative of where we are: I was talking to ChatGPT about LinkedIn sales tactics this morning and it tried to sell me a Pepsi (who buys Pepsi?!). We’ve all been advertised at left, right and centre our whole lives. ChatGPT Ads will be another thing we learn to tune out. Useful to know it’s in the room. Not useful to overthink it yet.
Sources: PPC Land · Digiday
SparkToro and Similarweb dropped the country-by-country zero-click data for Q1 2026. The UK headline: 69.5% of UK Google searches now end without anyone clicking through to a website. That’s the highest rate in the six-country dataset, ahead of the US at 68% and well ahead of Germany at 62.1%.
My take. Forget the other countries for a second. They’re fascinating, they’re not the story. The story is the UK number, and what it means is that businesses need to get their heads around how they’re showing up in AI search and what to do about it. This figure is only going to keep rising for a while. Your buyers aren’t reaching your website by clicking a Google result the way they used to. They’re getting the answer somewhere else, and that somewhere is generally AI. If your web activity is falling off a cliff and you’re wondering why, this is it.
Source: SparkToro: zero-click rates by country, analysis of Similarweb data, Jan to Apr 2026.
At the World News Media Congress in Marseille earlier this month, the SPUR Coalition (Standards for Publisher Usage Rights) announced a 30-publisher expansion. New members include Canada’s CBC/Radio-Canada and The Globe and Mail, France’s CMA Media as a founding member, Switzerland’s Ringier, and the UK’s PPA (the trade body for the magazine sector). The stated mission: build shared technical and licensing standards so AI developers access journalism in legitimate, responsible and convenient ways.
My take: The implication for brands is the bit that gets overlooked. If you’re cited by AI today because publisher A wrote about you in 2024, the licensing terms publisher A signs in 2026 directly shape whether the model still sees that mention in 2027. Find out which publishers cite you. Watch how they’re signing. The next twelve months will set what AI answers are allowed to say about your brand for years afterwards.
Sources: Press Gazette · Journalism.co.uk
Le Monde, the only French publisher with a direct OpenAI deal, says traffic referred from ChatGPT is “marginal” in volume but converts 70 times better than referrals from Facebook and 173 times better than Google Discover. CEO Louis Dreyfus called the deal a “win-win” with no cannibalisation.
My take. The conversion stat is interesting. The real story underneath it is trust. What this number is showing is the level of faith audiences are putting in AI-delivered content. People are moving and making decisions on the back of an AI summary in a way they don’t on the back of a Facebook scroll or a Google Discover card. Compared to almost anything else they encounter, AI is the source they’re acting on. That shift happens before they ever land on your website. If AI is where the trust gets built, AI is where you need to be visible.
Source: A Media Operator: Le Monde CEO on the OpenAI deal.
Good (mostly) to be at a PR conference again after a long time away. The AI for PR Conference in London this week was boring in parts, fascinating in others, and full of old faces I hadn’t seen in ages. It also reiterated quite how many competitors I have (90% of the flyers in the goody bag), and that number is climbing every month. Look out for a piece from me on the UK AI visibility agency landscape very soon, fair-handed, named names, who’s actually doing what.
One thing came up at the conference worth flagging here. Hard Numbers, the agency Paul Stollery co-founded, published research showing how easy it is to get ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Claude to repeat a made-up claim. Paul ran a small influence campaign asserting he is the UK’s Best Dressed PR Practitioner. There is no such award. Weeks later, the models were saying he was. Generous nod to Paul, it’s a great piece of work and a great joke.
The bit I think is missing: nobody is searching for “UK’s Best Dressed PR Practitioner”. You can move the answer to a question, but if your buyers aren’t asking that question, you’ve shifted nothing. The real job is understanding the real questions your audiences are actually asking AI about your category, seeing what AI currently says back, and working out how to be visible inside those answers.
As a marketing tactic, I bought a few football shirts and printed Known & Cited on the back. Including the red England away shirt. I wore mine for the first England game of the tournament. England were the best I’ve seen them play in years. So obviously now I will be sporting one for every further game. Cause and effect.
I also wore a K&C Japan away shirt to the conference this week, got so many comments on it that I am never turning up to a conference again not wearing a branded football shirt. Granted I may have also looked like a child, but if it gets attention...
Be Known. Be Cited.
See you next time.
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