“PR is for Free” Myth: the Hidden Costs of Getting Earned Media Coverage

Many businesses perceive PR as a low-cost alternative to traditional advertising, seeing the “zero” on the media invoice. However, I agree with Gini Dietrich, the creator of the PESO model, who said: "Media relations is expensive, time intense, and there are no guarantees." 

Once you account for the investment of time and resources, free PR often proves to be one of the most expensive channels in the marketing mix.

PR teams’ salaries, and not only theirs

Securing an organic placement in a Tier 1 outlet is a complicated process that involves deep journalist research, highly personalized pitching, and several iterations of edits.

To maintain a consistent media presence, you need a well-coordinated team. Depending on  the process, the team’s structure varies. The baseline minimum is a PR specialist and a content writer, while a more robust setup may include a designer and a data analyst.

Our team once decided to earn an organic mention in Forbes by creating a unique news hook. To achieve this, we analyzed which resources Forbes contributors linked to most frequently. First, we scraped over 10,000 articles by Forbes authors, then developers analyzed the dataset to identify patterns—specifically, which types of sources the contributors trusted most. After successfully pitching the results of the study to a Forbes journalist, we were mentioned in their original piece with a link to the study on our company’s blog.

From a PR perspective, this was a pure earned media win in a Tier 1 publication. However, once we added up the team’s hourly rates, we realized it cost us $6,000. So the “free” mention clearly came with a price tag, just not from the publication itself.

In the U.S. market, maintaining even a minimal PR unit starts at $22,000 per month. And these are fixed costs, incurred monthly regardless of whether your pitch lands.

Organizing press tours

I once spoke with a fintech client from Dubai who sincerely believed their PR was free of charge: “We never pay Forbes or Bloomberg. We simply bring journalists together, show them a good time, and get great coverage in return.”

However, when you break down this "free" case into numbers, the picture changes radically. Organizing such an event is a full-scale investment:

• Logistics and accommodation: flights, often business class, and five-star hotels.

• A hospitality program: official events and the unofficial part—fine dining, wellness retreats, and exclusive entertainment. Once, our Estonian client even hired a professional bath attendant to create a unique experience for journalists—a "quintessential Estonian" touch.

On average, a company spends between $5,000 and $10,000 for every invited journalist. So organizing a proper press tour for five to ten journalists could cost between $25,000 and $100,000. If you get five to ten articles in return, the net cost of a single piece amounts to $5,000–$10,000. Beyond that, months of labor from a team add thousands of dollars more in payroll to each placement’s cost. 

Ultimately, you can incur all these costs and still receive no coverage, or, what’s even worse, negative coverage, as it remains entirely at the journalist's discretion.

Professional tech stack

Modern PR is impossible without a professional tech stack, which acts as a "radar" in an oversaturated media landscape. The basic infrastructure minimum includes access to professional databases such as Muck Rack or Cision to find targeted contacts. A valuable add-on would be media monitoring and AI content analytics, such as Brandwatch, Meltwater, or Determ, to track mentions and assess sentiment. This allows the team to react instantly to relevant news hooks.

The cost of such a toolkit is substantial: a professional database costs between $5,000 and $10,000 per year per user, while analytics and monitoring services add another $300–$800 to the monthly bill. These costs are fixed, so you pay for them regardless of the outcome, which creates negative ROI if your pitches don’t land.

AI invisibility: the cost of waiting for an editorial opening

The most insidious cost in PR is opportunity cost. Earned media is, by nature, a slow and unpredictable tool. While your team spends months polishing a pitch or waiting for an editorial opening, the business loses momentum. You might aim for a peak period of consumer demand, but due to long editorial cycles, your article may appear only after the market trend has shifted. This mismatch results in a direct loss of potential profit that no "free" placement can compensate for.

In 2026, the cost of waiting has escalated due to the rise of GEO. AI systems form a brand’s reputation based on existing online data far faster than organic articles can be published. Every month spent in the "waiting room" of a Tier 1 editorial office is a month where AI systems learn to answer user queries based on your competitors’ content. 

While you wait for a single organic mention, AI may already be cementing your competitor’s status as the industry leader in the eyes of millions of users. In this new reality, the gap in media presence may lead to a permanent loss of visibility in the AI-driven search ecosystem.

From “free” coverage to calculated ROI

Since earned media is rarely free, should you abandon it? Absolutely not. 

Earned PR is an investment like any other, so the choice of this channel should never be based on the illusion of zero cost. Instead, it must be a calculated business decision based on your specific goals and resource efficiency.

This means you must calculate its ROI with the same rigor as you do for performance marketing. Assess both your costs—direct and indirect—and determine the right proportion of earned versus owned, paid, or shared media aligning it with your current stage of growth. While paid media provides the speed and control necessary for scaling, earned, owned, and shared media build the long-term trust and loyalty that cements your brand’s reputation.