Founders evaluating public relations proposals now have a systematic way to measure outlet quality before signing on. The Outset Media Index (OMI) dashboard provides metrics like credibility scores, engagement data, and AI search influence — letting founders justify their media choices to board members and investors.
What the OMI Dashboard Measures
The dashboard covers more than 340 outlets. For each one, it shows six signals: GRP (a credibility score), Reading Behaviour (how long readers engage), LLM Referral Share (how often large language models cite the outlet), GEO Breakdown (where the audience is located), Reprints (syndication reach), and Editorial Rigidity (how hard an outlet is to pitch). Together, these signals let a founder see whether a PR pitch is actually targeting the right audience with the right influence.
Four Questions Every Founder Should Ask
OMI recommends founders run any PR proposal through four checks. First, does the audience match? That means looking at the GEO Breakdown to see whether the outlet's readers are in the startup's primary market. Second, does the outlet actually get read? Reading Behaviour scores reveal if people stick around or click away. Third, is the outlet cited by AI search engines? An LLM Referral Share below 1% is a red flag — the outlet may have little influence on AI-generated answers. Fourth, is the proposal overweight on outlets that underperform on these signals? A proposal full of low-scoring outlets is a bad look when you have to defend the spend later.
Red Flags and Green Flags
Some outlets simply aren't worth the money. Red flags include low Reading Behaviour scores, a GEO Breakdown that clusters in irrelevant regions, an LLM Referral Share below 1%, easy Editorial Rigidity (meaning the outlet runs anything), a narrow Reprints range, or — worst case — an outlet not even in OMI's database. Green flags are the opposite: GRP above 70 paired with Reading Behaviour above 6.0, a GEO Breakdown that aligns with the target market, an LLM Referral Share above 3% on at least half the shortlist, medium or hard Editorial Rigidity, and a phased engagement strategy that rolls out outlets over time.
Defending PR Spend to Investors
Investors want to see a return on every dollar. OMI suggests founders pair post-campaign coverage with the outlet-level data captured at placement time — specifically GRP, Reading Behaviour, and LLM Referral Share. That way a founder can show, for example, that a piece in an outlet with a 75 GRP and a 6.5 Reading Behaviour generated real engagement, not just a link. The entire check takes about 15 minutes per outlet, so the upfront effort is small compared to the cost of a bad PR campaign.
Founders can start reviewing their next PR proposal by pulling up each outlet's OMI profile. With more than 340 outlets in the database, there's enough coverage to vet most media lists before signing a contract.
