Editorial rejection rates have risen 33% since 2024

PressWhizz's 2025 outreach benchmark shows editorial rejection rates on guest-post pitches up roughly a third year-on-year. The dominant driver is editor scepticism: the flood of AI-generated guest post submissions arriving from low-effort outreach has trained editors to default to a no, particularly for unsolicited cold pitches without prior relationship. The downstream effect on programme economics is significant: same outreach budget now yields fewer accepted placements, which raises the effective per-placement cost even before list prices move. Programmes that already invest in pre-outreach editor relationships and human-drafted personalisation have been comparatively insulated from the rise.