Drawing heavily from Google, the start-up Perplexity AI announced to the media Adweek start selling ads. It plans to launch this feature in the coming quarters, according to Dmitry Shevelenko, the company's chief business officer. If so far, this ensures that research should be “freed from the influence of advertising-driven models”, the fact remains that advertising has always been in the company's cards. “Advertising was always part of how we were going to build a great business,” declared Dmitry Shevelenko.
For the record, the creation of the start-up dates back to 2022. Behind it and its search engine, AI researchers from Meta and OpenAI. The service is powered by both OpenAI's GPT model and its own AI model. Its operation is also rather simple: the user asks questions in natural language and is returned summaries which cite their sources. He can then probe further with other questions if necessary. It currently has a monthly subscription of $20.
A boost for the development of the start-up
Since its beginnings, the start-up has been able to forge its way in territory already conquered by the Mountain View firm. It thus obtained funding of $73.6 million during a funding round last January, increasing its valuation to $520 million. Today, Perplexity AI is able to integrate videos and images into the response and even data from partners like Yelp. Perplexity AI also links sources in the answer while suggesting related questions users might want to ask.
And these questions represent no less than 40% of Perplexity's queries, a gold mine for the company. The whole challenge therefore lies in the exploitation of these questions. The start-up therefore intends to introduce native advertising, allowing brands to influence these issues, as confirmed by Dmitry Shevelenko.
Make the most of your 10 million users
However, this development includes a certain number of questions, starting with the start-up's ability to scale up, its consideration of security but also its access to audience data and efficiency. of its targeting. Likewise, while it claims more than 10 million monthly active users, the start-up already has an installed base that should be exploited as best as possible.
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