• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 30, 2024

Perplexity, the AI search startup that is already being challenged by publishers over using their content, has launched a revenue-sharing initiative called the Perplexity Publishers Program. It has signed several publishing partners: Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune and WordPress.com. 

The announcement does not mention Condé Nast, which recently sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter, or Forbes, which has also accused Perplexity of using its material. But the new program appears to address some of those concerns.  

For one thing, Perplexity will offer advertising through its related questions feature. If the firm earns revenue from an interaction in which the publisher’s content is reference, the publisher will earn a share. 

Outside reports say those percentages could be in the double digits. Whatever the amount, “It’s a much better revenue split than Google, which is zero,” Automatic CEO Matt Mullenweg told The Verge.

Perplexity will also provide free access to its Online LLM APIs. In addition, Perplexity is making its Enterprise Pro research tool available to publishing partner employees for free for one year.  

Other types of revenue sharing might include bundled subscriptions in which users pay a flat fee for both Perplexity Pro and subscriptions to participating publishers. 

 “We structured this program to ensure we have a scalable and sustainable way to align incentives for all parties,” says Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity CEO. “We appreciate the publishers who have joined us for this program and provided us with valuable feedback about how it should operate.

One such publisher was Time. "Time is committed to embracing innovative new technologies and platforms to advance our mission of providing trusted journalism for audiences around the world,” says Mark Howard, chief operating officer, Time. “We are proud to join Perplexity's Publishers’ Program as a launch partner to continue to expand access to reliable information and engage audiences in new ways.”

The company is working with ScalePost.ai, a platform that provides AI analytics for publishers.

Perplexity shared news of the program during the recent VC Transform event.  

“It’s the first of its kind revenue share program where if they are contributing a source input for an answer, and we’re monetizing that answer with advertising, we’re going share that revenue with those publishers that contributed to that,” Dmitry Shevelenko, chief business officer, said, according to Venture Beat.