Why we’re experimenting with advertising 

To fully deliver on our mission to spark the world’s curiosity, we need to invest in building not just a beloved product, but a robust and self-sustaining business. That’s why starting this week, we will begin experimenting with ads on Perplexity.

Before getting into the details, we want to highlight our guiding principle: the content of the answers you receive on Perplexity will not be influenced by advertisers. Users come to Perplexity for a more efficient, uncluttered, and unbiased search experience, and that isn’t changing.

Ads will appear in the US to start and will be formatted as sponsored follow-up questions and paid media positioned to the side of an answer. Here's an example of how they will appear:

Advertising material will be clearly noted as “sponsored,” and answers to Sponsored Questions will still be generated by our technology, and not written or edited by the brands sponsoring the questions. We intentionally chose these formats because it integrates advertising in a way that still protects the utility, accuracy, and objectivity of answers. 

We’re thrilled to announce some of our first brand and agency partners, representing the largest and most beloved in the world, including Indeed, Whole Foods Market, Universal McCann, PMG, and others We appreciate their open minds and innovative spirits as we collaborate to build a new advertising paradigm together.

Why we’re taking this approach 

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. 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.

Ad programs like this help us generate revenue to share with our publisher partners. Experience has taught us that subscriptions alone do 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 steady and scalable revenue stream. 

This is an experiment and formats may evolve, but two principles will always remain true: (1) These ads will not change our commitment to maintaining a trusted service that provides you with direct, unbiased answers to your questions, and (2) we will never share your personal information with advertisers. Our advertising approach is designed to complement the Perplexity experience. 

As we move forward, we invite our users to be part of this journey. Your feedback will be invaluable in shaping the future of advertising on Perplexity. Ultimately, this initiative is about ensuring Perplexity's long-term sustainability and our ability to continue innovating and improving our service. By diversifying our revenue streams, we're investing in a future where we can expand our capabilities, support our publisher partners, and most importantly, continue to spark curiosity and deliver unbiased, high-quality information.

Thank you for your continued trust and support. Together, we're building a more informed and curious world, one question at a time.