AI search engine 'Perplexity' will soon start advertising, and the unit price will be revealed

CNBC reports that Perplexity , a search engine equipped with an AI chatbot, will begin displaying ads in the fourth quarter of 2024 (October to December). Perplexity says that it will cost more than $50 (about 7,300 yen) to display an ad 1,000 times.

Perplexity AI plans to start running search ads in fourth quarter
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/22/perplexity-ai-plans-to-start-running-search-ads-in-fourth-quarter.html

Perplexity Reportedly Plans Ads for AI Search App
https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2024/perplexity-plans-ads-ai-search-app/

Inside the Deck Perplexity Is Using to Pitch Advertisers
https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/inside-the-deck-perplexity-is-using-to-pitch-advertisers/

Perplexity AI to launch ads on search platform by fourth quarter | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/perplexity-ai-launch-ads-search-platform-by-fourth-quarter-2024-08-22/

Perplexity AI To Start Running Ads In Q4 As AI-Assisted Search Gains Popularity - TV News Check
https://tvnewscheck.com/uncategorized/article/perplexity-ai-to-start-running-ads-in-q4-as-ai-assisted-search-gains-popularity/

CNBC obtained an exclusive pitch deck the company created to promote the app's popularity and usage, which stated that Perplexity is downloaded more than 2 million times each month and answers more than 230 million queries. In the U.S. alone, Perplexity searches have increased eightfold in the past year.

Perplexity raised funds in April 2024, and the company's valuation was estimated to exceed $1 billion (approximately 146 billion yen). Perplexity's valuation more than doubled in just three months. However, as Perplexity's popularity grew, the company was accused of ignoring robots.txt, which blocks crawlers.

Perplexity, a generative AI search engine, ignores crawler-preventing 'robots.txt' to extract information from websites - GIGAZINE

In response to this, Perplexity has changed the way it cites sources and updated the generated content to directly display the source. In addition, Perplexity has launched an advertising revenue sharing program to share a portion of advertising revenue with the authors of articles cited in its AI-generated answers. Participants in this advertising revenue sharing program include Fortune, TIME, Entrepreneur, Der Spiegel, and WordPress.

Perplexity, whose AI search results were found to be plagiarized, launches a program to share advertising revenue with major media outlets - GIGAZINE

Perplexity's Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko said that if three articles from a publisher are used in one answer in July 2024, the publisher will receive three times the usual amount of revenue. Shevelenko said that the goal is to increase the number of publishers participating in the program to 30 by the end of 2024.

According to information obtained by CNBC from an anonymous source, Perplexity uses a metric called CPM (cost to display an ad 1,000 times) for advertising, and the CPM for Perplexity's search service appears to be more than $50. Considering that search marketing company Semrush estimates that the CPM for PC display ads is about $2.5 (about 360 yen) and the CPM for mobile videos is $11.1 (about 1600 yen), it is clear how expensive Perplexity's advertising service is.

Perplexity plans to cover topics such as technology, health, medicine, arts, entertainment, finance, and food as advertising categories. Advertisers can sponsor 'related questions' that appear under the answers output by Perplexity and purchase display ad space on the right side of the screen or on the answers.

Perplexity also claims that more than eight in 10 users have a bachelor's degree, three in 10 work in senior management roles, and 65% work in high-paying white-collar professions such as medicine, law, and software engineering.