Publishers Perplexed with Perplexity
August 7, 2024
In an about-face, reports Engadget, “Perplexity Will Put Ads in it’s AI Search Engine and Share Revenue with Publishers.” The ads part we learned about in April, but this revenue sharing bit is new. Is it a response to recent accusations of unauthorized scraping and plagiarism? Nah, the firm insists, the timing is just a coincidence. While Perplexity won’t reveal how much of the pie they will share with publishers, the company’s chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko described it as a “meaningful double-digit percentage.” Engadget Senior Editor Pranav Dixit writes:
“‘[Our revenue share] is certainly a lot more than Google’s revenue share with publishers, which is zero,’ Shevelenko said. ‘The idea here is that we’re making a long-term commitment. If we’re successful, publishers will also be able to generate this ancillary revenue stream.’ Perplexity, he pointed out, was the first AI-powered search engine to include citations to sources when it launched in August 2022.”
Defensive much? Dixit reminds us Perplexity redesigned that interface to feature citations more prominently after Forbes criticized it in June.
Several AI companies now have deals to pay major publishers for permission to scrape their data and feed it to their AI models. But Perplexity does not train its own models, so it is taking a piece-work approach. It will also connect advertisements to searches. We learn:
“‘Perplexity’s revenue-sharing program, however, is different: instead of writing publishers large checks, Perplexity plans to share revenue each time the search engine uses their content in one of its AI-generated answers. The search engine has a ‘Related’ section at the bottom of each answer that currently shows follow-up questions that users can ask the engine. When the program rolls out, Perplexity plans to let brands pay to show specific follow-up questions in this section. Shevelenko told Engadget that the company is also exploring more ad formats such as showing a video unit at the top of the page. ‘The core idea is that we run ads for brands that are targeted to certain categories of query,’ he said.”
The write-up points out the firm may have a tough time breaking into an online ad business dominated by Google and Meta. Will publishers hand over their content in the hope Perplexity is on the right track? Launched in 2022, the company is based in San Francisco.
Cynthia Murrell, August 7, 2024
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