‘Our marketing is not a bullshit machine’: Why Perplexity is investing in targeted, organic growth

The customer acquisition conundrum

Instead, Perplexity is banking on its name carrying weight to keep current users engaged and attract new ones, especially the high-level professionals its targeting. The platform received 780 million queries in May, CEO Aravind Srinivas shared at Bloomberg’s Tech Summit last summer.

From a mind share perspective, Perplexity hovers between 5-10%, according to Morning Consult research. Midjourney, Runway and Grok also fall within this range. By comparison, OpenAI’s ChatGPT commands nearly 40% of user’s market mind share.

“To a large extent, we benefit from not having to tell our story to everybody,” Dwyer said. He later added, “We’ve just really benefited from a user base that really loves what makes us different.”

Perplexity’s ‘experimental’ phase

What’s clear is who Perplexity is targeting: curious decision-makers like CEOs, investors, lawyers, high-profile athletes and journalists, Dwyer said, without revealing specific details about the breakdown of its user base. What’s less clear is Perplexity’s tactical approach to marketing as Dwyer declined to outline specific spend figures and described the company’s media mix as “experimental.”

In June last year, the AI platform hosted its first coffee pop up, Curiosity Cafe, at NY Tech Week. Those efforts have since expanded to a permanent brick and mortar location, Cafe Curious, which opened in Seoul, South Korea last September to introduce more people to the Perplexity brand. And instead of a Super Bowl spot last year, Perplexity hosted a sweepstakes in which a user won $1 million. The winner was a small business owner based in Nashville.

Ad spend to build trust

Perplexity’s approach — along with their AI competitors — has been to convince consumers not only to use their platforms, but to trust them as questions and concerns around environmental impacts, data privacy, deepfakes build.

In terms of ad spend, MediaRadar reports that Perplexity shelled out nearly $3.5 million on media last year, including online video ads, search and social ads, and other digital channels. In comparison, Anthropic Claude spent $4.3 million while OpenAI spent nearly $90 million.

When Perplexity does advertise, it has featured talent who are actual users, like Squid Game actor Lee Jung-jae or Perplexity investor and Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton, according to a spokesperson.

“You can look at this approach as a cross between organic and influencer. Because they’re trying to actually use organic [strategy] to gain influence and gain trust,” said Gary J. Nix, founder and chief strategy advisor at Brandarchy Edge, a digital and experiential brand consultancy.

Still, other AI behemoths have spent a lot of money on advertising the last year, show up on marketing’s biggest stages — most notably, the Super Bowl. And last September, Anthropic launched its first major brand campaign with media placements in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, according to The Drum.

“Perplexity’s organic strategy works because it’s tailored for personal support in a user’s daily life,” Heather Barrett, vp of strategy and planning at B2B marketing agency Transmission, said in an email to Digiday. “That kind of one-to-one relationship can be proven quickly through use, it doesn’t need to be bought.”

For Perplexity — that means sitting out the $8 million per sport 2026 Super Bowl.

“We’re relentlessly focused on the people who Perplexity is for, and all of our marketing activities and budgets are built on that one simple idea,” Dwyer said.