Perplexity’s new rev-share publisher program is live, but not all pubs are sold

At its core, the Publisher Program is a revenue-share deal between the AI company and publishers, based on revenue made from advertising on Perplexity’s platform — a business it has not yet launched but is planning to have operational by the end of the year. 

Perplexity intends for advertising to be its main source of revenue, Shevelenko said, adding his goal is to break the search engine model, which historically has not provided media partners with a revenue share model. “Publishers that create content that is rich in facts, that’s useful to answering people’s questions … they’ll be on that journey with us. If we’re not successful, it doesn’t matter. But if we are successful, we want [publishers] to join in that success with us,” he said. 

While Shevelenko would not disclose the exact terms of the revenue share, he said publishers earn at least a double digit percentage of the advertising revenue on a per-source basis, meaning if a user’s search query yields an answer that features two articles from the same publisher, the publisher would earn double the commission.

The rev-share ratio is expected to change depending on the program’s success and if the rate increases, Shevelenko said publishers that signed on the initial cohort — including Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune and Automattic — will receive the increased rate as well. But publishers who join later might have a lower rate. The deals span multiple years, though the total duration varies from publication to publication.

The six publications, as well as WordPress, have joined the Publisher Program to date with another cohort joining in August. Shevelenko said he anticipates having 30 publishers signed on by the end of the year.

“This isn’t meant to be some exclusive list. Anybody that produces high quality content that is rich in facts, whether it be a small publisher, big publisher, independent blogger, if we’re monetizing that for advertising, we want to share that upside,” said Shevelenko.

Perplexity declined to share exactly how many unique users are on the platform, but last month, the AI answered 250 million questions, up from 500 million in all of 2023. And Shevelenko said that while CPMs are not yet set for ads on Perplexity, the company is in the process of building out its sales team and onboarding third-party sales operations that will be tasked with selling advertising on the platform. Luxury consumer-facing brands are the initial target, he said but B2B brands will be pursued as well. 

Not a content licensing agreement

For the better part of a year, publishers have been seemingly signing deals left and right with AI tech companies, like OpenAI and Google, in order to be compensated, largely in a flat fee or set rate structure, for the content these companies are using to train their large language models (LLMs).

But unlike OpenAI’s or Google’s content licensing deals, Shevelenko said Perplexity doesn’t need to license content because it’s not training its LLM on the writing. Instead, Perplexity’s core product sources facts published within journalism and uses them in its query responses, which he claims “is fully in the domain of fair use” and “a fundamentally different use of the content.” Hence the revenue share deal structure.

“This is truly ancillary revenue [for publishers]. We’re not really competing with publishers … The publisher program is not a legal strategy,“ said Shevelenko. “People don’t come to Perplexity to read news articles, but they come to ask questions … and journalistic content is incredibly rich in terms of the facts that are embedded in it. And if there is not a healthy ecosystem for open publishing of that content that is fact-rich, the core Perplexity product experience starts to degrade.”

Some publishers, however, feel as though this program undervalues their journalism, given that Perplexity’s product is, to Shevelenko’s point, only as strong as the journalism that’s available.

According to a Forbes spokesperson: “Perplexity came to Forbes with a proposal several months ago, and we chose to decline because it significantly undervalued both our journalism and the Forbes brand. It’s critical for AI companies to create fair deals that respect and recognize the time and resources it takes to create impactful journalism.”

For other publishers that have signed onto Perplexity’s program, ensuring fair value for their content means communicating with the AI companies that are already using it. 

“Fortune believes publishers need to be actively involved in ensuring our valuable content is used, attributed, and compensated for appropriately by companies developing AI products. Our eyes are open to the challenges and the possibilities,” said Patrick Reilly, a spokesperson for Fortune. 

Sonal Shah, CEO of the Texas Tribune, said in an email to Digiday: “Every revenue opportunity to us is an important revenue opportunity. The more important part of this agreement is a relationship with Perplexity. As AI continues to develop, we want to ensure that we are focused on audience and revenue.” 

Sweetening the deal

Some publisher partners will also be able to sell the ad inventory on Perplexity as well, which would increase their share of the revenue split, though Shevelenko declined to say by how much. They will be able to earn a share of revenue on every search query their advertising clients show up against, not just the ones their content is used to source the answers. None of the publishers in the program that spoke with Digiday would disclose if they are planning to sell this ad inventory.

As part of the program, publishers also receive free access to Perplexity’s APIs, which would allow them to create custom answer engines on their websites and embed its “related questions” algorithm into the publishers’ articles, as well as a one year license to Enterprise Pro, Perplexity’s fact-checking and research tool, for all employees of the publication. 

Time’s chief operating officer Mark Howard told Digiday that while his team is exploring Perplexity’s APIs to potentially use in new products, it’s not currently using the fact-checking and research tool in its day-to-day editorial operations. Time is one publisher that’s been actively negotiating with AI companies over content licensing deals, having also signed a content deal with OpenAI in June.

“Our intention is to actively engage with this rapidly changing technology by leveraging partnerships with multiple AI platforms,” said Howard in an email. “This will enable us to reach new audiences, advance our mission to expand access to trusted information worldwide, and ensure that we earn fair value for the use of our trusted journalism through licensing agreements.”

Shevelenko said the door is open to other publishers to participate in the publisher program. “The ball is in our court to show that this is real, to show that ad revenues are material. And I’m sure over time, most publishers will happily say yes to free ancillary income.”  

Condé Nast and Forbes are welcome to join the publisher program as well, Shevelenko said. “Even if you’ve written us a letter, it does not preclude us sending you checks.”