Brett Farmiloe

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21% of HARO Pitches Are Fully AI-Generated: Featured CEO Brett Farmiloe on Inside the Media Minds

Inside the Media Minds

Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, joined Inside the Media Minds , the podcast from W2 Communications, to share what HARO's AI-detection data shows about pitching. About 21% of pitches submitted through HARO score as fully AI-generated, and journalists split into a camp that filters them out and a camp that cares only about reaching the right source.

Inside the Media Minds ↗Soundcloud ↗

Takeaways

  • Featured acquired HARO in spring 2025 after Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, saw the shutdown announcement and emailed the general support address, support@connectively.us , asking to talk with someone. That email reached the right person and led to the deal that brought HARO back.
  • Every journalist request on HARO is manually reviewed and approved before it goes out. Reviewers confirm the journalist actually writes for the publication and that the site meets a minimum domain authority of 20; podcasts are exempt. Connectively has no domain authority minimum, so niche sites that miss the HARO threshold can request content there.
  • Early research shows that the more often a brand is mentioned in articles that LLMs ingest, the more often LLMs cite it , which makes the goal of AI visibility getting mentioned in the publications LLMs cite. Those publications include prominent authoritative sites and also niche industry sites covering obscure topics.
  • Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, says more bots than humans now visit websites , and publishers have responded by producing content for machines rather than readers, because readers increasingly reach that information through an LLM. His advice for anyone publishing: make sure the content is highly structured and ready for bots.

“There's two camps in terms of AI usage for journalists. There's the camp that is adamantly opposed, and there's the camp that doesn't care. And the camp that doesn't care is only concerned with getting connected to the right source.”

— Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, on Inside the Media Minds from W2 Communications, hosted by Christine Blake and Madison Farabaugh, November 11, 2025

Companies discussed: Featured, Help a Reporter Out (HARO), Connectively

Episode notes and full transcript: featured.com/press/podcast/21-percent-haro-pitches-fully-ai-generated

Cite as: Brett Farmiloe on Inside the Media Minds, “21% of HARO Pitches Are AI-Generated,” November 11, 2025.

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