Blog post
June 25, 2019

The Gold Standard

In the past year, there have been over 280,000 media mentions of the Commonwealth Games in Australia.

When you look at the sheer scale of coverage for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, it’s amazing to think just how complex and diversified the voices within that noise are. As Australia’s largest sporting event this decade, the Games are attracting worldwide interest – providing a perfect example of how media intelligence is crucial for any organisation to remain empowered and informed. 

Supporting the work of the Commonwealth Games by delivering invaluable insight to those working behind the scenes enables the team to digest huge volumes of content into bite-sized pieces of knowledge that can be used to take action, address key topics or issues, and keep the broader organisation informed.

From a personal perspective, it’s been amazing to watch as the Commonwealth Games preparation unfolds – setting somewhat of a ‘gold’ standard when it comes to media intelligence and insights. 

Why? Because the team have recognised the value of not only pulling out pertinent coverage daily, but engaging in media insights to better position themselves and react to negative press accordingly.

If you do the math, 280,000 media mention averages out to around 780 media items a day across social and mainstream – and that’s during a non-Games time period.

Now let’s multiple this number by about 10 to account for the increase of coverage during Games time. This team is tasked with staying across more than 7,800 media items per day across social and mainstream, globally.

It’s easy to understand the need to prepare, because the numbers don’t stop there. For example there’s expected to be a TV audience of 1.5 billion, 1.5 million spectators, 6,600 athletes and over 15,000 volunteers – all engaged and ready to be part of #GC2018.

With those numbers spinning around in my head, it’s easy to see how clients can become overwhelmed. Analysis is simply a must-have in this scenario – even just to get some perspective on the sheer volumes of coverage.

When you think about an event like GC2018, there is a lot of information that needs to be tracked – and much of it is not about the sport itself. From the infrastructure, to local community issues, to travel issues, ticketing, athletes and venues (the list goes on!) to beautiful PR pieces, hosting media at the Commonwealth Games Village (CGV), and briefing ambassadors on crisis management.

Being able to distill, digest and make sense of this volume of coverage is something we’re proud to be supporting – providing the tools to capture instant quantitative insights as well as tracking trends and peaks in coverage against issues or topics to support the team’s decision-making processes during the Games. 

From our broadcast monitors, to our daily briefing editors to our operations and account management. From our senior analysts who work on our key sporting client’s insights, to our client service support – we’ve all been working towards this event in some way or another for the past few years, and the countdown is now on! We’ve also had countless conversations about making sure we’re ready for every possible scenario that may impact the Games (and as a result, the media environment surrounding it). The Isentia team have workshopped and considered issues from power outages, to weather conditions, to doping scandals, to village incidents, to buses of athletes crashing. We need to make sure we are positioned to meet anything that comes up, and that includes having an embedded staff member at HQ from now until the end of the Games, providing always-on support.

Similarly, the Commonwealth Games team are busy building infrastructure and creating impact from the Games which will result in generational benefit for the Gold Coast region and Queensland. It’s not just a one-time sporting event. The Games venues will leave world-class infrastructure for future international events, while the Commonwealth Games Village will become the heart of the Gold Coast health and knowledge precinct.

When you’re in the sport of media intelligence and supporting crisis management, it’s critical to be able to map out scenarios that may impact clients, ensuring the both of you are prepped and ready for what’s ahead. At Isentia, we pride ourselves on being an extension of our client’s team. And for an event like the Commonwealth Games, we are sitting side-by-side, every step of the way – excited to support Queensland’s growth well into the future.

Isentia is proud to be supporting the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games by delivering powerful media intelligence and insights all the way to the finish line. Read more from John Bissinella, Head of Client Success about how we stay ahead of the games to deliver the best possible service for our clients here.

Patricia Kavanagh, QLD State Manager

Share

Similar articles

object(WP_Post)#7670 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(1972) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "36" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2019-06-25 02:37:30" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-06-25 02:37:30" ["post_content"]=> string(5450) "

We’ve implemented a lot of changes over the last six months to ensure our clients are ready for the years ahead – working on what’s important to ensure that we deliver the best possible service.

Shifting forces

Issues can move quickly with almost hourly twists and turns, some snowballing from a single simple tweet. Unless you’re checking multiple channels regularly, it’s easy to lose track of a story’s trajectory.

Take the recent news focus on Barnaby Joyce. The story developed over two weeks and each day delivered a new angle, with influencers from both sides weighing in via different forms of media. If you’re like me, the story would have had you hooked with an impressive volume of chatter and numerous voices shaping the overall picture. With Mediaportal, stories like this are much easier to get a handle on - tracking velocity, following the twists and turns, seeing who is driving the agenda and tracking its geographical impact.

We’re passionate about this connection point where our clients can navigate this dynamic, rapidly changing landscape to apply or build-out strategies that place their knowledge at the heart of action. This vision to both discover and inform our clients so they know their media better than anyone else with a team behind that technology that knows exactly what they’re trying to achieve, is what’s driving the year ahead for Isentia.

Our roadmap for Mediaportal is designed to be agile to respond to evolving needs and deliver greater interconnection between information and understanding. All designed to give our clients the ability to harness the game-changing potential of real-time actionable media intelligence.

The laws of simplicity: People and tech 

If you’re the weightlifter, consider us your spotter. Our teams work hard to understand your business and the issues that are important to you. We’re here to partner with you for the long-term and have real people picking up your phone calls. Our approach to the simple yet powerful combination of people and technology makes us fairly unique and it's one our clients really value. Having someone to work with so that your content is more accurate and relevant, allowing your team to spends less time sifting through mountains of irrelevant content is just the tip of the ice-burg. 

We are your backup when the board comes knocking for answers. Clients who have tried less sophisticated services on the promise of “something different” and a budget price, invariably come back to us with stories of painful service, and unfulfilled promises. With us, you have confidence and a solution that's ready to go without the hassle - it's a big reason why so many clients recommend us to others.

That’s why we’re invested in having the right people with the best minds for our business to build on our personalised service, delivering the largest scope of content anywhere in the Australian market.

Channelling an athlete’s mindset

Our commitment to our industry cannot be questioned. We continue to lead and innovate - focusing on delivering the best service for our clients and making their lives easier. And like Commonwealth Games greats Ian Thorpe, John Landy and Dawn Fraser, we made it here through hard work, commitment and passion. As the external environment has changed, we have remained ahead of the pack - never compromising on our desire to equip our clients with accurate, curated insights into their media landscape.

For us, Client Success means delivering rich and accurate data for our clients so they remain on top of breaking issues, and are able to better understand how their strategic communications and business initiatives are truly interpreted by their various stakeholders through the lens of media coverage and social discussions. 

We are our clients’ support team – their high-performance coach, and we continue to strive for greatness as we cheer the real athletes to glory in this year’s Commonwealth Games and beyond.

Isentia is a proud partner of the GC2018 Commonwealth Games, delivering powerful media intelligence and insights all the way to the finish line.

John Bissinella, Head of Client Success for Australia

" ["post_title"]=> string(25) "Staying ahead of the game" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(144) "Isentia is a proud partner of the GC2018 Commonwealth Games, delivering powerful media intelligence and insights all the way to the finish line." ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(25) "staying-ahead-of-the-game" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2019-06-25 08:13:26" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-06-25 08:13:26" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(36) "https://isentia.wpengine.com/?p=1972" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" }
Blog
Staying ahead of the game

Isentia is a proud partner of the GC2018 Commonwealth Games, delivering powerful media intelligence and insights all the way to the finish line.

object(WP_Post)#9104 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(49595) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "75" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2026-08-26 03:39:30" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2026-08-26 03:39:30" ["post_content"]=> string(3210) "

Would you trust a brand more if an AI model recommended it? For many, the answer is yes – and it’s changing the very nature of PR & Comms.

Our latest report digs into the changing nature of trust, as audiences turn to AI models for quick answers instead of going to organisations or media outlets directly, with AI fast becoming the final stop in the comms cycle. 

This report unpacks:

  • Why trust has shifted, and where audiences are having these conversations
  • Why AI has become the last stop in the comms cycle
  • Methods for staying on top of your brand trust and reputation

To access the full report, fill in the form below:

Discover our Lumina AI suite here.


" ["post_title"]=> string(63) "How AI is destabilising trust and reputation amongst audiences?" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(144) "Learn how LLMs reshape brand perception and actionable steps organisations can take to maintain trust and reputation in the new information era." ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(62) "how-ai-is-destabilising-trust-and-reputation-amongst-audiences" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2026-08-26 03:46:01" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2026-08-26 03:46:01" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(32) "https://www.isentia.com/?p=49595" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" }
Blog
How AI is destabilising trust and reputation amongst audiences?

Learn how LLMs reshape brand perception and actionable steps organisations can take to maintain trust and reputation in the new information era.

object(WP_Post)#12076 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(49408) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "75" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2026-08-20 02:44:11" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2026-08-20 02:44:11" ["post_content"]=> string(16590) "

If you ask ChatGPT or Gemini about your organisation today, the answer won't come straight from your website. Instead, it uses sources the model already trusts, which are often months or years old. So if your last big mention was a crisis or a controversy from 2023, that's probably still how AI describes you.

This is the tough reality for anyone working in PR and communications today. More people are getting their first—and sometimes only—impression of your organisation from an AI-generated summary, not from search results or the homepage. And these summaries often rely on outdated information.

What does freshness actually mean?

Content freshness refers to how recent the sources are that an AI model uses when it talks about you. It might seem like a minor technical point, but it's actually very important.

Search engines have always valued fresh content, and they let you update information quickly. If you change a page, Google recrawls it, and rankings can shift in days. Large language models don't work like this. As Lisa Main, Director at Main Bureau, said on Isentia's "AI as a Stakeholder" panel,  "large language models are not databases of verified facts." These models are trained on a snapshot of the internet, updated only from time to time, and they rely on sources that were already prominent when they were trained. This means a past crisis or a controversy that is already resolved can keep showing up in AI answers long after it's no longer relevant.

She shared the example of how a day and a half after a notorious terror attack, she asked ChatGPT if the area had ever experienced a tragedy of that type. It replied that it had not." The model wasn't being careless, but it just hadn't updated to include the latest news. This gap between what reality is and what AI still believes is true sums up the content freshness problem.

Dr Nici Sweaney, founder of AI Her Way, explained on the same panel why this gap matters. She calls AI "an accidental narrator" — it shapes what people believe about your organisation just by repeating the latest information it received. The system simply uses what's available and is not trying to be harmful, so it's important to make sure that information is up to date.

How does this change the way organisations show up?

For PR and communications teams, this changes what "reputation management" means. Put simply, messaging that an LLM cites will remain relevant, no matter when it dates from. Messaging that has not been factored into the LLM’s answers, meanwhile, will have no discernible impact on an increasingly vital - even central - channel, regardless of how many other metrics it might win out on. 

This leads to two important things to consider:

  • First, the conditions that surround recent earned media, statements, and announcements determine whether an AI model updates its picture of the brand, or keeps running on an outdated one. Catherine Arrow of the PR Knowledge Hub made a related point on the "Inside the AI Shift" webinar: LLMs and the agents built on them are "often forbidden from going behind paywalls, from scraping particular sites," which she said creates a kind of "news vacuum." The same logic applies to the brand’s own newsroom or press page. If it isn't feeding the model something current, the model has nothing current to draw from.
  • Second, owned content—like blog posts, media releases, and website pages — are strategically important because they’re something the organisation in question can control , but only if they are updated. If a page hasn't changed in eighteen months, it's much more likely to disappear from AI results, making any reputation built on it unstable. If something is published once and not updated, the brand risks letting older, less positive stories take its place.

For public sector and government communicators, the stakes are more immediate again. When a government agency's guidance changes, whether that's eligibility criteria, compliance requirements, or a service update, and the fresh version doesn't make it into what AI models are citing, people will still get fed old information, with potentially devastating real-world implications. 

The evidence is already there

This is not just in theory. It's playing out in global research and in the day-to-day data right now.

  • AI is quietly replacing the front door to your content

The Reuters Institute's Digital News Report Australia 2026 confirms that many PR teams have noticed that Google organic search traffic to news sites dropped by a third worldwide between November 2024 and November 2025, and by 38% in the US, as AI Overviews and AI Mode launched. Publishers expect this traffic to nearly halve again in the next three years. Some now call this trend a move towards "Google Zero." For communications teams, this means people are increasingly less likely to  click through to your website to check if information is current. More often, they're trusting what the AI says: hence why it’s so important to monitor content freshness.

  • AI models are now web-enabled and they might not actually guarantee source accuracy

One challenge is that most major chatbots are now web-enabled. For example, ChatGPT can browse the internet, Gemini uses Google Search, and Perplexity has its own live index. This makes it easy to assume that AI always knows the latest information. However, this does not mean that they are always accurate when it comes to citations. A study from Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism tested eight AI search tools with 1,600 queries. They found that these tools failed to correctly identify or cite the source article more than 60% of the time. Some tools were wrong on most tests and rarely showed any uncertainty. New information has not had time to be checked or confirmed like older stories have. This is the real risk of relying on the newest updates — a story that is fast moving and poorly sourced about your organisation might end up in an AI answer before it’s even verified or fact-checked. 

  • People are turning to AI chatbots specifically for what's new

The same report found that 35% of people who use AI chatbots for news do so to get the latest media updates. Dr Sora Park from the University of Canberra's News and Media Research Centre explained on the "Digital News Report Australia 2026" webinar that the main reason people use AI chatbots for news is that "AI collates stories from different news sources into a single response." People expect these tools to provide current information. If your organisation's newest content isn't included (and you have something current or novel to communicate) you miss the chance to reach audiences when they're most interested.

  • Fresh content doesn’t always equate to ‘new’ content

A notable example  of creating freshness that LLMs reward and prioritise comes from updating existing pages, rather from creating brand-new content. Republishing and refreshing current material is more effective than many communications teams realise, as long as one actually updates the content, not just the date.

  • Evergreen pages are the first casualties when AI overviews roll in

The DNR Australia 2026 report also notes that once someone is inside an AI chatbot conversation, they rarely leave it to check the source — only 4% of AI chatbot users say they always or often click through to the original article, compared with 19% for search and 17% for social media. The pages that used to earn traffic just by sitting there, permanent and useful, are now the ones most likely to lose visibility, because AI models favour what's recent over what's merely correct.

  • One fresh statement doesn't automatically undo a stale narrative

If an executive online, especially one who has a lot of weight to what they post online, says something controversial and it quickly spreads across media articles, social media and search — it will definitely be picked up by AI as well. There is a golden window of opportunity that they need to capitalise on to clarify what they said. If they don’t, the negative story that was already built into the data AI models use, will not be affected much by the executive’s clarification statement, which wasn’t that timely anyway. As Catherine Arrow of the PR Knowledge Hub said on the "Inside the AI Shift" webinar: "public relations and media relations are not the same thing," and relying on a single release misses the point. The real lesson is not to publish faster after a crisis, but to build a strong, up-to-date presence before you need it. In our latest report, “How can leaders communicate in an age of scrutiny”, we’ve outlined exactly how comms leaders can communicate by adapting their content to audiences exposed to the “AI way” of news dissemination. 

What PR & Comms teams should actually do?

The challenge is that organisations can't make an AI model update its answers whenever they want. What they can do is track whether recent work is actually being noticed, which is what  Lumina AI View can help with.

Lumina AI View monitors which sources AI models use when talking about your organisation, how strong and recent those sources are, and how you compare to competitors. Freshness is one of five key factors in the overall score. If your freshness score drops, it's an early warning that your latest campaign or announcement hasn't reached the AI ecosystem yet, and older stories are still dominating.

What’s important to note is that the tool provides a list of source citations, paired with reputation pillars like direction, integrity, performance and innovation — giving a comms professional a fully-rounded understanding of what they need to do. It’s not just the case of knowing source citations, but also of understanding your own AI perception and performance to make informed decisions — whether that’s for a brand,a government agency, a NFP or elsewhere.

This kind of tracking is even more important because it shifts by industry and by market, so "AI visibility" doesn't mean the same monitoring job for every organisation. AI answers for healthcare might draw from the smallest, highest-trust pool of sources (mostly clinical and government), but SaaS and fintech answers lean heavily on editorial reviews and comparison sites.  Ngaire Crawford made a similar point regionally on the "AI as a Stakeholder" panel. For the APAC region specifically, she pushed back on the assumption that editorial media dominates AI citations — "there are a lot of really massive claims about the impact of editorial media... some as high as 85, 88%. That's not what we're seeing." Instead, she found "a fairly even split between (editorial media) and company content," alongside a real presence for review sites, forums, and academic sources. For a comms team, that means the freshness strategy that works for a media-heavy consumer brand might not work for a government agency whose AI visibility is really riding on review sites, .gov pages, or industry forums instead.

By tracking regularly — weekly or as a routine check— you turn the vague concern of "what is AI saying about us" into something that is super clear. You can see if recent coverage changed your list of citations, or if your owned content is still being found, or where there are gaps that need to be filled because old stories still exist and are causing problems.

The opportunity in staying current

There's a real advantage here too. If old content keeps you tied to an outdated story, fresh content is a direct way for PR and communications teams to influence how AI presents them. Publishing regularly, keeping your own pages updated, and getting recent, credible coverage is not just for human audiences. It's how PR professionals can make sure the systems shaping first impressions have the right information.

Teams that make it an ongoing habit of checking in regularly, watching for changes, and keeping fresh, credible content flowing, will have more control over how AI describes their organisation.


If you would like to know more about our Lumina suite, please reach out here and our team will get in touch with for you a quick demo.

" ["post_title"]=> string(60) "Why is content freshness the new currency for AI visibility?" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(172) "AI summaries are replacing websites as your organisation's first impression. Here’s why content freshness—and the sources feeding these models—matters more than ever." ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(59) "why-is-content-freshness-the-new-currency-for-ai-visibility" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2026-08-20 02:44:18" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2026-08-20 02:44:18" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(32) "https://www.isentia.com/?p=49408" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" }
Blog
Why is content freshness the new currency for AI visibility?

AI summaries are replacing websites as your organisation’s first impression. Here’s why content freshness—and the sources feeding these models—matters more than ever.

Ready to get started?

Get in touch or request a demo.