In our first webinar of 2026, Unlocking Value: Strategies to amplify analyse and optimise your reporting content, Richard Dixon, Chief Digital Officer at Black Sun Global, explored the evolving landscape of corporate reporting and how organisations can unlock significantly greater value from their reporting suite.
As AI reshapes search behaviour, audience expectations, and how content is consumed, companies face both challenges and opportunities: improving visibility, increasing engagement, and ensuring their corporate story is accurately represented, even to audiences who may never land on their website.
Shifts in search behaviour are fundamentally changing how reporting content is discovered. Google impressions continue to rise while clickthrough rates decline, especially when AI generated summaries appear. Around 60% of searches are now clickless, and AI-bot activity has increased dramatically, with scraping activity from tools such as ChatGPT up by more than 1,000%.
This means reporting content is now being consumed not only by human readers, but also by AI systems that extract, evaluate, and cite your content, even when users never visit your site.
A new “iceberg model” reflects this balance:
PDFs vs HTML: Why Format Matters
PDFs continue to be cited by AI, but they are not reliably readable. HTML remains the most effective format for visibility, accuracy and AI discoverability.
As AI reshapes how information is found, organisations have greater opportunity to extend the reach and impact of their reporting suite. Developing a clear engagement plan helps define what content matters most, who it is for and which channels will deliver the greatest value.
Online reporting continues to deliver strong results. Engagement rates typically reach around 80%, and online content is read significantly more than downloaded PDFs. Many users move from online reports into deeper areas of the website, helping sustain year-round visibility of performance, strategy and sustainability content. HTML formats also play a critical role in improving discoverability within AI driven search tools.
Different reading behaviours must also be considered. Some audiences skim for headlines, others want structured summaries, while more in-depth users look for detailed datasets and extended analysis. Layered content, interactive elements and multimedia formats allow organisations to support all three behaviours.
Alternative formats are also becoming more common, including text-to-speech options for key messages, short highlight videos and interactive charts. At the same time, many organisations are adopting AI driven website assistants such as AIVIA, enabling users to ask natural language questions, access performance information instantly and navigate more intuitively.
With more channels to publish on, and greater pressure to publish structured content online, technology plays a key role.
Integrations with platforms such as Workiva now allow:
This “write once, publish everywhere” capability will become increasingly important as demands for online content expand.
Analytics now play a central role in understanding how reporting content performs across both human and AI audiences. Organisations can monitor which AI tools are scraping their content, where that activity originates and which pages are most frequently accessed. Alongside traditional web analytics, this provides a clearer picture of stakeholder interest, including which organisations, such as investors or ESG analysts, are visiting specific areas of the site.
These insights help determine how effectively an organisation is owning its narrative, how visible its content is across key channels, and which areas should be prioritised for future improvement. AI scrape analytics, in particular, are becoming a vital signal of wider market visibility.
A set of clear strategic priorities emerges from these insights:
The team can support in three core areas:
If you’d like a copy of the full webinar recording or support across any of these areas, please contact:
Abbie Dixon, Relationship Marketing Executive
adixon@blacksun-global.com
About Black Sun
Black Sun Global is a stakeholder advisory and engagement agency that's been driving transformation and positive change for ambitious brands for more than 20 years. With deep expertise in disclosure and reporting, ESG, sustainability, and digital engagement, we reshape how organisations connect with customers, investors, employees, and the wider world.
We are trusted partners to some of the most influential global organisations, sparking innovation and sustainable performance through our strategic insights, partnerships, and proprietary technologies.
As founders of the Positive Change Group, we are on a mission to create a new kind of stakeholder relations partner. Our world-class specialists work closely with executive leadership teams to protect reputations, inspire trust, and promote responsible business practices - building resilience and long-term value in a rapidly changing world.
For more information, please visit: www.blacksun-global.com
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