Perplexity, the AI-Powered Search Engine, Could Soon Incorporate Ads: Report

Perplexity AI, the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search engine, is reportedly planning to show ads on its platform. The advertisers will be given space in the related questions part of the user flow, where the ads will be incorporated based on the relevance of the user query, as per the report. The company is said to show ads by the next financial quarter, which users might see starting in July. Notably, recently Perplexity partnered with Nothing to offer a free Perplexity Pro subscription on every purchase of Phone 2a.

The Chief Business Officer of Perplexity, Dmitry Shevelenko, spoke with Adweek to reveal the company’s plans to sell ads. As per the report, the plan is to integrate ads in a way that is not obstructive or intrusive to the user. For that, Perplexity will show ads in its related questions section that appear when a user makes a primary query on the platform.

Once a user asks a question, the AI chatbot scours the internet to find relevant information and presents it in a conversational style, while annotating the sources where it took the data from. Right underneath that, there is a ‘Related’ section which shows questions that delve deeper into the topic or questions related to the original query. Currently, the company claims these related questions to be organic and curated using the recommendation algorithm of AI. However, once the company starts selling ads, these will be a combination of organic and brand-sponsored questions.

However, the report stated that the company does not plan to show random ads, and will only place them where it is also relevant to the user. The Google Search rival told Adweek that the decision to include ads in the related question section was made as it accounts for 40 percent of the AI search platform’s total queries. In January, Perplexity’s CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a post that the platform has 10 million monthly active users (MAU).

The strong numbers also resulted in the platform raising $73.6 million (roughly Rs. 613 Crores) in its Series B funding led by IVP. Nvidia and Jeff Bezos were also onboarded as investors during the fundraising. Now, the company must convince advertisers that the ad space it is selling them can offer good visibility for their products.