Perplexity AI, the company behind the artificial intelligence (AI) search platform of the same name, announced on Tuesday that it will begin experimenting with ads this week. An earlier report had highlighted the company’s plans to include ads by the end of the year to boost its revenue. The AI firm says the ads will be shown in a format that won’t clutter or ruin the user experience of the platform. Additionally, it highlighted that all ads will be marked as sponsored to notify users when an ad is displayed.
How Perplexity plans to show ads on search results
In a blog post, the AI-powered search engine shared details of how it plans to implement ads on the service. Claiming that it will not mimic the SEO industry’s use of “arbitrary tactics to improve your rankings at the expense of user usefulness”, Perplexity says it will instead show ads in a “transparent” format and a brand Will generate user curiosity about.
How ads will appear on Perplexity’s platform
Photo Credit: Tangle
Perplexity will display ads as “Sponsored Follow-up Questions” and “Paid Media” on the side of the answer. The ads will include a question that highlights the brand’s offerings directly. The AI firm also highlighted that if a user clicks on a sponsored question, the response will not be written or edited by the brand, and will instead use Perplexity’s AI to generate an authentic answer.
The company also revealed that Indeed, Whole Foods Market, Universal McCann, and PMG are its initial brand partners, and users can expect to see ads from these companies in the coming days. While Perplexity plans to begin testing its ads this week, they will only be shown to users living in the US.
Perplexity says the move to serving ads will allow it to generate revenue and share it with its publisher partners. Perplexity pays partner publishing companies to use their articles and data to generate answers to questions.
“Experience has taught us that membership alone does not generate enough revenue to create a sustainable revenue-sharing program. “Especially given how rapidly our publisher program is growing, advertising is the best way to ensure a stable and scalable revenue stream,” Perplexity said.
