Branded or Buried: Pete Pachal on Why AI Will Expose the Real Value of Media
# Artificial Intelligence
# B2B
# B2C
# Data monetization
# Digital Strategy
# Media
# Monetization
# Value Creation
How AI is forcing media brands to prove their worth or disappear in a sea of undifferentiated content.
Heather Holst-Knudsen
AI isn’t coming for media, it’s already here. But its most profound impact won’t be flashy tools or productivity gains. It will be ruthless transparency.
I recently sat down with Pete Pachal, founder of The Media Copilot, former Chief of Staff at CoinDesk, and longtime tech journalist, to unpack this on The Revenue Room™ podcast. In a world where AI can surface, summarize, rank, and generate content instantly, the question isn’t whether media brands can keep up. It’s whether they can stand out.
The End of Media as Performance Art
For years, some media brands survived on reputation, legacy, and reach. But AI doesn’t care about any of that. It’s engineered to surface utility, prioritize structure, and reward trust signals. What it won’t do is boost your content because your brand once mattered in 1998.
Pete and I talked about how AI strips the polish off performance. Are you answering a real question better than anyone else? Is your content built to be discovered, not just published? If not, it doesn’t matter how beautiful your homepage is or how many Pulitzers you’ve won.
This moment is an inflection point. The brands that survive won’t just “do” content. They’ll architect it.
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A Tale of Two Strategies: Reuters vs. Dotdash Meredith
Pete made this point especially vivid with a case study comparing two high-profile publishers taking very different approaches to AI.
Reuters, one of the world’s most respected news institutions, is built on speed, breaking news, and real-time updates. But in the age of LLMs, breaking news is the easiest content to commoditize. AI models can scan, summarize, and repackage the same facts faster than any newsroom—and often without giving credit.
By contrast, Dotdash Meredith has invested in evergreen, utility-driven content—think health, wellness, parenting, and home improvement. Their playbook? Precision SEO, schema markup, structured data, and a ruthless focus on performance.
The result? Dotdash Meredith is built to feed the AI future, while Reuters finds itself more vulnerable. Dotdash's content is not just readable, it’s usable, indexable, and trusted. In a world where AI agents make decisions on behalf of consumers, Dotdash shows up, and shows up strong.
It’s not a matter of better content. It’s a matter of content designed to survive in AI ecosystems.
The New Mandate for Media Brands
This shift demands more than tactical adaptation. It’s a call for strategic reinvention.
“It’s not just about embracing AI,” Pete said. “It’s about understanding how AI will decide whose content gets surfaced and why.”
Brands that once relied on audience affinity must now prove data validity. Editorial vision needs to be matched with technical architecture. And growth leaders must ask:
Is our content built to answer questions AI is being asked?
Is our brand recognized as a source worth surfacing?
Are we structured to be found after the search bar disappears?
In other words, it’s time to stop assuming your content is enough—and start proving its value at the system level.
My Takeaway
As Pete put it, AI is the new gatekeeper. But it’s also an opportunity. It will force media companies to get brutally honest about where they add value and where they don’t.
The ones that will thrive? They’re not necessarily the biggest. They’re the clearest, most structured, most usable. They’ll be the ones that understand their audience and the algorithms equally well.
And that’s the future I want to help build. One where performance isn’t guessed, it’s designed.
Heather Holst-Knudsen is a distinguished figure and expert in the events, media, marketing and technology sectors. Using her extensive experience, she guides clients in adapting to structural economic and market changes, seizing the chance to innovate and evolve. She specializes in digital and data disruption and opportunity, exploring how these overarching factors can impact revenue growth, customer-centricity, operational efficiency, profit margins, and the overall valuation of companies in both public and private markets.
Her journey began at her family business, Thomas Publishing Company, where she honed her skills. She further expanded her expertise by holding positions at early industry giants Miller Freeman, Reed Elsevier, and IDG. Returning to Thomas Publishing, Heather founded and spearheaded Manufacturing Enterprise Communications, an integrated media portfolio connecting buyers and sellers in the manufacturing and technology sectors. Starting in 2015 and spanning the next seven years, she leveraged her expertise as a revenue and business leader in various SaaS businesses, including Feathr, Gleanin, Brella and Edflex.
Heather is deeply passionate about digital innovation, data monetization, and AI and how these strategies fuel revenue growth, profitability, and company valuation. To serve and create value for clients in these areas, she launched H2K Labs, dedicated to generating and leveraging value through data for media, business information, events, and adjacent technology and service markets.
