Somewhere in your market this week, a homeowner with water coming through the ceiling opened ChatGPT instead of Google and asked who to call. It named two or three roofers. There's a decent chance your biggest roofing advertiser wasn't one of them.
"Your top accounts are probably already asking why they don't show up when a customer asks ChatGPT or Google for a recommendation," said Zack Watson, Rambunctious Rhino's founder. "The paper that raises it first at renewal keeps the account and adds a line to it. The one that waits loses that conversation to a startup's cold email."
The shift is already here. BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 45% of consumers used a tool like ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity to find a local business in the past year. But few businesses make it into the answer: SOCi's 2026 Local Visibility Index found ChatGPT recommends just 1.2% of the more than 350,000 locations it studied.
Why a newspaper can sell this when an agency can't
When ChatGPT or Google answers "best orthodontist in [city]," it often runs a live web search and reads what comes back: directory listings, review sites and local coverage. That includes the story your newsroom ran when the practice opened its second office, the sponsored feature it bought last spring, and years of business briefs that name the business on a domain that has covered the area for decades.
"These tools cite the sources they trust for local information, and in your market that's been the paper for decades," said Jillian Lira Dutson, Rambunctious Rhino's chief operating officer. "An SEO shop three states away can tune a website. It can't put a business inside the local paper's archive, and that archive is exactly what these systems read when they decide who to recommend."
What you'd actually be selling
Rambunctious Rhino delivers white-label AI visibility through its visibility division and entirely behind the publisher's brand. It's packaged like the digital services a paper already sells, in four parts:
It pairs with what the paper already sells. Every sponsored feature and business story on the paper's domain is one more trusted local source these tools can read.
Set expectations honestly
"What we can promise is better odds of being named, and a monthly report that shows what's moving," Lira Dutson said.
Plenty of the shops cold-emailing your advertisers promise first place. Your advertiser has heard that before. An audit and a monthly report beat a guarantee nobody can keep.
The odds do move. "When these tools can clearly read what a business does, they cite it more often," Lira Dutson said. "One medical supply client grew its AI citations 37% month over month. That's a result a rep can walk into a renewal with." Rambunctious Rhino's AI optimization case study details that engagement.
Who to pitch first, and when
Start with your top accounts by spend: dealerships, law firms, healthcare, home services, real estate, banks. In these categories a customer's first question is "who should I call," and a single lead is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. Your champion is whoever approves the current ad spend, usually the owner or the marketing director.
Bring it to renewal meetings, not cold outreach. The advertiser is already reviewing what they buy from you and why. Two things they say tell you it's time: "our traffic is down," and some version of "why don't we show up on Google anymore."
Keep the pitch simple. Start with the customer, not the technology: "Close to half of consumers used an AI tool to find a local business last year. Have you looked at what it says about you?"
Handling the objection you'll hear most
"We already have an SEO agency." Tell them to keep it. A site can rank well and still fail an AI audit, because good SEO and AI visibility aren't the same problem. The agency handles the website and rankings; this covers what AI tools check when they decide who to recommend. For the publisher, it's a recurring line on its stickiest accounts, sold into renewal conversations it's already having.
Where to start
The first step costs nothing. Run your ten largest accounts through the free AI visibility check and see who's missing. Where your advertiser scores low, you have the pitch. Rambunctious Rhino handles everything after that, fully white-labeled.
Explore white-label AI visibility for publishers | Book a partnership call
About Rambunctious Rhino:
Rambunctious Rhino is a white-label digital execution partner for media companies and their sales teams. Through its AI visibility division, Rambunctious Rhino delivers AI-search and generative-engine optimization (audits, technical cleanup, citations and reporting) under the publisher's brand, alongside its search, social, programmatic, connected TV and streaming-audio fulfillment. Founded by Zack Watson, a media and advertising veteran with more than 20 years across the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Gannett, AdTaxi and The Denver Post.
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