United States users on Perplexity should begin seeing sponsored
responses to queries this week. Whole Foods Market, Universal McCann, and PMG are some of the first brands to advertise.
Ads will appear as follow-up questions labeled as "sponsored" and
appear on the side of the answer. Perplexity will answer the questions with its AI search technology.
Brands and sponsors will not write or edit answers to the query.
Perplexity
intentionally chose these formats because it integrates advertising in a way that still protects the utility, accuracy and objectivity of answers.
"While brands are keen on understanding how their companies appear in AI answer engines like ours, we will avoid duplicating the SEO industry where people are
implementing arbitrary tactics to improve their rankings at the expense of user utility," the company said. "We would rather give brands a transparent way to advertise through Perplexity that —
rather than attempting to manipulate answers — encourages users to express their curiosity about a brand."
Backed by Nvidia, the company said earlier this year it would share revenue
with publishers such as Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and WordPress.com in a model that would alleviate potential issues between Perplexity and online media companies.
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The brand will pay Perplexity an undisclosed fee for every thousand user views of the sponsored question based on a CPM
model.
Publishers in the program will earn a percentage of the advertising revenue for each of their web pages that are presented as a source where a sponsored
question or media appears. A user does not need to click on the sponsored question for a publisher to earn their revenue share.
If two pages from a publisher partner are presented as a source in
this scenario, they would earn double the revenue for that given query.
Calling the sponsored ads an experiment, Perplexity said the format may evolve, but two principles will remain.
The company said ads will not change Perplexity's commitment to maintaining a trusted service that provides direct and unbiased answers to your questions, and there are no plans to share personal
information with advertisers.