Perplexity Adds The Independent, LA Times, Blavity, and Others to Its Publisher Revenue-Sharing Program

Perplexity’s Publisher Program, which distributes revenue to media outlets when their content appears next to ads on the AI search platform, has recruited its second batch of publisher partners.

The San Francisco-based startup now works with over a dozen global media titles, including the Los Angeles Times, Blavity, The Independent, Prisa Media (the leading Spanish-language media brand), Lee Enterprises (owners of local newspapers in 73 markets), DPReview, Gear Patrol, MediaLab, Mexico News Daily, RTL Germany brands, World History Encyclopedia and ADWEEK. With additions like Japan’s Newspicks and Minkabu Infonoid, Perplexity is going global with its recruitment efforts, expanding into the U.K., Spain, Japan, and Latin America.

Jessica Chen, Perplexity’s head of publisher partnerships, wouldn’t share exact deal terms but said it is targeting premium publishers, including those with niche expertise.

Participating publishers also get a free one-year subscription to Perplexity’s Enterprise Pro, which includes access to the company’s developer tools and analytics. These resources help publishers track how their content appears on Perplexity, with data provided by both Perplexity and ScalePost. AI startup ScalePost helps publishers monetize data that might otherwise be scraped by AI bots from companies like Google, OpenAI, and Perplexity.

“It’s not the best deal I’ve seen,” said a publisher executive involved in the agreements, speaking to ADWEEK on the condition of anonymity to preserve industry relationships. While traffic from Perplexity isn’t huge, how much publishers will get from this rev share will also depend on how its ad business will scale.

ADWEEK first reported Perplexity’s ad plans in April. The startup has since added a small number of brands and agencies, like Indeed, Whole Foods, Universal McCann, and PMG, to test its sponsored ads on Perplexity in the U.S., it announced in November.

Chen told ADWEEK that Perplexity plans to scale its advertising efforts by expanding brand partnerships beyond the U.S. The company aims to grow its 12 current categories, increase brand collaborations, and extend its ad reach into global markets but did not disclose specific details.

In 2025, Perplexity is making significant investments in its Discover page, while exploring potential collaborations with publisher partners to create and curate content for the platform.

“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.

In October, OpenAI officially added an AI-powered search engine into ChatGPT, making it the latest entrant in the search arena, competing with Google Search, Microsoft Bing, and Perplexity. This week, the AI firm announced a CMO and suggested to the FT that ads were in its future.

The ChatGPT maker has also inked partnerships with major media brands, including News Corp, Axel Springer, and Condé Nast, ahead of the rollout, with efforts to drive traffic back to publishers’ websites by including prominent citations for source content in search results. OpenAI’s head of media partnerships told Press Gazette said it does not currently intend to share ad revenue from its SearchGPT product with publishers whose content it surfaces