Perplexity is launching a program to share ad revenue with publishing partners, following weeks of plagiarism accusations. The “Publishers’ Program” has recruited its first batch of partners, including prominent names like Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, and others. Under this program, publishers will receive a share of the ad revenue when Perplexity features their content in response to user queries. They will also get a free one-year subscription to Perplexity’s Enterprise Pro tier and access to developer tools. Payments are made on a per-source basis, with especially favorable terms for the initial partners.
Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platnick added that payments are made on a per-ource basis, meaning publishers are compensated for each article used in responses. The program will temporarily provide cash advances on revenue to publishers as Perplexity builds a long-term advertising model. The advances aren’t a licensing fee for content like OpenAI’s deals.
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said the publishing agreement doesn’t cover WordPress.org, but Automattic will be sending payments to direct customers of WordPress.com. “The amount, I don’t know! Probably small to start because they don’t make much revenue now, but if Perplexity is the next Google, which I think it has a chance of being, these numbers could become meaningful and we’re looking to help publishers get paid in every way we can.”
The new program comes a month after a Forbes editor found the publication’s paywalled reporting plagiarized in Perplexity’s new product, Pages. Wired then published an investigation that found Perplexity’s AI was paraphrasing articles without proper attribution.
Perplexity raised $250 million at a $3 billion valuation in May and plans to start introducing ads in September. The company is aware it isn’t the norm for a search tool to pay publishers, but wants to build a profitable business by forming alliances with the media.
There’s also the looming threat of OpenAI, which just announced a prototype of its AI-powered search product, SearchGPT. OpenAI has taken stock of Perplexity’s mistakes and is giving publishers full control over how their content appears in OpenAI search features.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/30/24208979/perplexity-publishers-program-ad-revenue-sharing-ai-time-fortune-der-spiegel