Baden Bower vs AuthorityTech: Two Agencies Selling AI Visibility Through Placements
The short version.
AuthorityTech is a Dallas agency run by founder Jaxon Parrott that calls itself "the world's first Machine Relations agency". Its pitch is that earned media placements are what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews cite, so it sells placements, paid per placement into escrow and released when the article goes live. It has no pricing page. The only figures it publishes for its own service sit inside its comparison article about Baden Bower: $3,000 to $5,000 per mid-tier placement and $5,000 to $8,000 for tier-one titles. Its refund policy is a 90-day delivery guarantee, with a refund of the escrowed payment or a replacement placement if the agreed deliverable is not live within 90 days and the delay was not client-caused.
Baden Bower sells individual placements from $495 at fixed catalogue prices across 1,980-plus publications. A Publisher Access membership ($2,500 a month month to month, $1,950 a month on three months, $990 a month on twelve months) gives member pricing on that catalogue. Every outlet's price, domain authority, turnaround and link status is published before you buy. The guarantee refunds any contracted placement that does not run and has been in every contract since 2018. AI visibility is sold as a measured add-on, an audit at $2,500 across five engines, rather than as the whole thesis.
The two companies agree on the mechanism and disagree on almost everything about how to sell it: what to publish, what to guarantee, and who the buyer is.
Baden Bower vs AuthorityTech, eight rows that matter.
Pricing model, guarantee mechanics, publication network, contract structure, timeline, best-fit buyer, AI visibility and geography. AuthorityTech data taken from authoritytech.io, its terms and refund policy, Crunchbase, Inc.com and Built In, 6 September 2026.
| Criterion | Baden Bower | AuthorityTech |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Individual placements from $495 at fixed catalogue prices across 1,980-plus outlets, each listed with its price, domain authority, turnaround and link status before you buy. A Publisher Access membership ($2,500/mo month to month, $1,950/mo on 3 months, $990/mo on 12 months) gives member pricing and includes PR strategy, story writing and editing, publisher query handling and TV coordination. | Pay per placement, funds held in escrow until the article is live. No pricing page; the site map lists seven pages and none carries a price. Its February 2026 blog gives $3,000 to $5,000 for mid-tier and $5,000 to $8,000 for tier one (Forbes, TechCrunch, WSJ), with "$6,000 (average Tier 1 pricing)". Minimums not published. Custom engagements scoped on a strategy call. |
| Guarantee mechanics | Money-back guarantee in writing since 2018. A contracted placement that does not run is refunded in full. Applies to placements only; the membership fee is not covered. Wording is on the pricing page and in the contract. | Refund policy: "90-Day Delivery Guarantee (Escrow)". If the SOW deliverable is not live within 90 days and the delay is not client-caused, the client is eligible for a full refund of the escrowed payment or a replacement placement of equal or greater value. Conditions: materials within 7 days of onboarding, approvals within 5 business days, no editorial or compliance breaches. AuthorityTech may pause the 90-day clock for client delays. Outside the guarantee, "All payments are final and non-refundable." The terms disclaim any warranty on "Expected campaign results or outcomes." |
| Publication network | 1,980-plus outlets in a public catalogue, each with price, domain authority, turnaround in days, dofollow, Google-indexed and sponsored-label flags. Regional editions are named as such. Flagship Forbes US is not carried; Forbes Australia, Middle East, Mexico, Colombia, India and other editions are. | Claims "1,673 publications in our direct network". The public Publication Intelligence Index lists 14: Medium, Forbes, Yahoo, PR Newswire, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, CNET (marked "Profile Post Only"), Fortune, Time.com, VentureBeat, WIRED, Allure and SourceForge. No prices, DA, turnaround or link status per outlet. No distinction between flagship and regional editions. No sponsored-content labelling statement. |
| Contract structure | Membership billed monthly on the term you choose; month to month has no minimum. Placements are commissioned one at a time against a named outlet and fixed price in the proposal. | Governed by a Master Statement of Work that is not public. The terms set out AuthorityTech's rights to suspend or terminate; they publish no client termination right, notice period, term length or renewal clause. Escrow funding is required before the guarantee applies, so the model does involve paying upfront, into escrow. |
| Timeline | Turnaround listed per outlet in the catalogue. Across 1,984 rows the range is 1 to 56 days, median 7 days, most common 14 days. | Three figures across three pages. Homepage: "first placements within weeks". Comparison blog: "Average time to publication is 21 days for Tier 1 outlets". Refund policy: 90 days before the guarantee triggers. The 90-day figure is the only one with contractual force. |
| Best-fit buyer | Founders, executives and marketing teams buying a program of placements across business, lifestyle, finance, technology and trade titles, who want strategy and writing included and the refund terms in the contract. Clients in 37 countries. | Technology, SaaS, fintech and B2B companies, in its own words, with venture-backed growth companies and unicorns as the reference clients ("27 Unicorns" on the homepage, "20+ unicorn clients" in the comparison blog). No visa or immigration work. No consumer, lifestyle or regional positioning. |
| AI visibility | Sold as an add-on with a price and a deliverable: AI visibility audit at $2,500, 50 buyer queries across 5 AI engines plus the fixes. Placements in indexed, authoritative outlets are the input. No citation is guaranteed. | The entire proposition. "Machine Relations", a term the founder says he coined in 2024, covers GEO, AEO and AI SEO. Homepage cites 84% of AI citations coming from earned media (attributed to Muck Rack 2026); the app subdomain says 89% with no source; the comparison blog claims "82-89% of AuthorityTech placements result in AI citations within 30 days". Free AI visibility audit offered. No citation guarantee; the terms disclaim outcomes. |
| Geography | Offices in New York, London and Sydney. 3,548 clients across 37 countries. Catalogue spans US, UK, Australia, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Europe, India, Africa and Latin America. | AuthorityTech LLC, Dallas, Texas. Terms governed by Texas law, venue Dallas County. Built In lists 2121 N Pearl St, Dallas. No address or phone on the company site, no other office, no markets-served statement. Team size not published; Built In says 2, Crunchbase 1 to 10, Inc.com 11 to 50. |
The guarantees are not the same product
Both companies say you only pay for what runs. Read closely, they are making different promises. AuthorityTech's marketing says "Guaranteed results or full refund" and "1 refund in 8 years". Its refund policy is narrower and more specific: a 90-day delivery window, two possible remedies, four qualifying conditions, a clock the agency can pause, and a Master SOW that overrides the public terms and is not published. Its comparison blog says "No upfront payment"; its refund policy says "Payment must have been made into escrow" before the guarantee applies. Escrow is better than paying an agency directly and hoping, and it is still money out the door.
Baden Bower's guarantee is shorter to describe because there is less to it. The outlet and the price are in the proposal. If the placement does not run, the placement fee comes back. The membership fee does not, and the pricing page says so in plain words. There is no 90-day clock because turnaround is set per outlet and printed in the catalogue, and there is no replacement-placement option because a refund is the remedy.
Neither company guarantees an AI citation, and any agency that does is guessing. AuthorityTech's own terms disclaim "Expected campaign results or outcomes". Baden Bower's audit measures whether your brand is being named, and what to fix if it is not, which is as far as any honest vendor can go.
Which one fits the job.
Both agencies say you only pay for what runs. The choice comes down to what is published before the call, who the buyer is, and how the guarantee is written.
You want to see every price before you talk to anyone. The catalogue publishes 1,980-plus outlets with price, DA, turnaround and link status; AuthorityTech publishes 14 outlet names and no prices.
- You are buying a program rather than a handful of placements, and want strategy, writing and editing, publisher query handling and TV coordination included in a fixed monthly fee.
- You operate outside pure B2B technology: consumer, lifestyle, hospitality, finance, real estate, health, fashion or a regional market where the right outlet is a national or regional edition rather than a US flagship.
- You want a refund as the remedy, in writing, with no clock the agency can pause and no SOW overriding the public terms.
- You want a global footprint, with teams in New York, London and Sydney and clients in 37 countries.
- You want AI visibility measured and priced as a deliverable, not offered as a free audit attached to a sales call.
You are a venture-backed technology, SaaS or fintech company and you want an agency whose entire practice is built around AI citation rather than readers, and whose founder has written extensively on the theory.
- You prefer paying into escrow with a 90-day delivery window and the option of a replacement placement, rather than a monthly membership plus per-placement fees.
- You want a Dallas-based US team and a custom SOW scoped on a call, and you are comfortable that pricing, minimums, term and cancellation are all agreed privately rather than published.
- You want flagship US tier-one titles such as Forbes, TechCrunch and WSJ named as the target, and you accept the $5,000 to $8,000 range its blog gives for them.
Same mechanism, different levels of disclosure.
AuthorityTech has a coherent thesis and, for a specific buyer, a coherent product. If you run a venture-backed software company, believe the AI-citation argument (we do too), want escrow rather than membership, and are happy to scope everything privately, it belongs on your shortlist. Its weakness is that almost nothing is published: no prices, no outlet-level detail beyond 14 names, no client termination terms, a founding year that SourceForge gives as 2018 and Inc.com as 2019 while the company site says only "8 years in business", and an independent review footprint that amounts to two aggregated ratings on SourceForge, an outlet it also lists as a placement venue.
Baden Bower is the better fit for a buyer who wants the numbers in front of them before a sales conversation, who is commissioning more than a couple of placements, or who needs coverage beyond US technology titles. The membership is a real cost that a one-placement buyer should weigh, and we say so on every comparison page. Against that, the catalogue is public, the guarantee is a refund, and the AI visibility work has a price and a report attached.
Two corrections for the record. AuthorityTech's February 2026 comparison article gives Baden Bower's pricing as "$2,500-$7,000 per placement" with a "$4,500 (average pricing)", and says Baden Bower promises coverage "in less than 72 hours". Neither figure is Baden Bower's. Placements run from $495 to $90,000 depending on the outlet, the membership sits alongside them, and turnaround is set per outlet from 1 to 56 days. The current figures are at badenbower.com/pricing. Its January 2026 article "Best Guaranteed PR Placement Agencies in 2026" ranks one agency, itself, followed by a heading called "Other Providers" that names nobody.
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Published in the publication you chose, at the price you were quoted, or that placement is free.
Every Baden Bower placement is contracted with a named outlet and a fixed catalogue price. If a contracted placement does not run, we refund the fee for that placement in full. Every outlet and price is published before you commit. The guarantee covers placements; the Publisher Access membership fee is not covered.
Get My Guaranteed Quote →What buyers ask when comparing Baden Bower and AuthorityTech.
The questions founders, CMOs and growth leads send during evaluation. If yours isn't here, ask us directly.
How much does AuthorityTech cost in 2026?
How does Baden Bower's pricing compare?
What does AuthorityTech's guarantee actually cover?
What does Baden Bower's guarantee cover?
Is AuthorityTech really the first Machine Relations agency?
How many publications can each agency place in?
Can I use both AuthorityTech and Baden Bower?
Which is better for AI visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews?
Sources. AuthorityTech positioning, network claim and statistics: authoritytech.io and app.authoritytech.io. Publication list: authoritytech.io/publications. Guarantee wording and conditions: authoritytech.io/refund-policy. Contract terms and disclaimers: authoritytech.io/terms. Pricing figures, timeline and claims about Baden Bower: authoritytech.io/blog/authoritytech-vs-baden-bower (10 February 2026). Ranking article: authoritytech.io/blog/best-guaranteed-pr-placement-agencies-2026 (11 January 2026, modified 27 May 2026). Leadership: team.authoritytech.io. Founding year and team size: crunchbase.com/organization/authoritytech, inc.com/profile/AuthorityTech, builtin.com/company/authoritytech, sourceforge.net/software/product/AuthorityTech. Baden Bower membership, placement floor, guarantee scope, add-ons and client counts: badenbower.com/pricing/ and the live placement catalogue at getstartedwithbadenbower.com/one-off. All checked 6 September 2026.
Last updated September 2026 · Written by AJ Ignacio, founder · Competitor figures re-checked quarterly · 4.9★ from 950 verified reviews
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