“The idea certainly being that [we] want to help them be discovered,” said Chen.
Perplexity, a relatively young startup, faces stiff competition from established giants like OpenAI and Google. The significance of its ad business depends on shifting consumer behavior—specifically, how quickly users move away from traditional search methods to AI platforms.
Perplexity’s first wave of publisher sign-ups in July included major outfits like Time and Fortune. These early partners inked multiyear deals, securing a double-digit share of ad revenue at an initial, locked-in rate. Perplexity said it aims to sign 30 publishers by year’s end, ADWEEK previously reported.
Perplexity’s checkered history with publishers
Perplexity, which handles over 100 million queries a week, has found itself in hot water with publishers like Forbes and Wired after a Forbes editor discovered the publication’s paywalled content had been plagiarized in Perplexity’s new product, Pages. This AI-powered tool lets users generate reports or articles based on prompts. Following the incident, an investigation by Wired revealed that Perplexity’s AI was “paraphrasing Wired stories, sometimes inaccurately summarizing them with minimal attribution.”
Forbes has since threatened legal action against Perplexity.
A June report by ADWEEK revealed that Perplexity was circumventing efforts by publishers like The New York Times, The Guardian, and Condé Nast to block its crawlers, potentially depriving these publishers of billions in ad revenue by accessing and serving their media content. In October, Perplexity was still driving modest traffic to publishers, including those who had attempted to block its bots, ADWEEK previously reported.
Soon after, The New York Times sent Perplexity a “cease and desist” notice demanding the company stop using the newspaper’s content for generative AI purposes, marking the latest clash between the news publisher and an AI firm.
Media companies have long fretted over tech giants like Google rolling out search product AI Overview, which could siphon traffic from publishers and upend revenue models built around search. But as AI increasingly takes center stage, partnerships with AI companies could provide a much-needed revenue lifeline—particularly if AI continues to eat away at traditional search.