Perplexity is opening up a pool of $42.5 million to publishers. As part of a new subscription model called Comet Plus, publishers can now get paid from direct, crawler and AI agent traffic through Perplexity’s AI-powered web browser Comet.
The company created the new model based on feedback from publishers that are already part of Perplexity’s ad revenue share program, Jessica Chan, Perplexity’s head of publisher partnerships, told Digiday. Publishers in its program include Blavity, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Gannett, The Independent and Time.
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Here’s how it works: Revenue from Perplexity’s subscriptions (Pro, Max and the new $5 tier Comet Plus, first reported by Bloomberg) gets pooled. Perplexity keeps 20% of it, and the other 80% will go to participants in Perplexity’s publisher program. Revenue is divvied up based on three categories: direct visits to publisher’s sites by people browsing using Comet, when publisher content is cited as an answer search queries on Comet and when content is used to complete tasks by Comet’s AI assistant. Perplexity is one of the first AI companies to pay publishers based on content usage.
Chan said publishers could stand to make “millions” from this program. She declined to share which publishers part of Perplexity’s existing program have signed up to make money from Comet Plus. Digiday spoke with her to find out more details about how the revenue model works and what it means for the future of AI companies paying publishers for their content.
“Perplexity only succeeds if journalism succeeds. We’re really committed to building and funding more sustainable, thriving news ecosystems for the AI age,” Chan said.
Perplexity declined to share how many Comet users it has, one month after launch.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
Why did Perplexity create this new revenue model?
Publishers are really the backbone of Perplexity, and our entire business model around Comet Plus… really grew out of their feedback… What I heard — what I continue to hear — wasn’t just a call for better pay, but it was really a need to kind of reimagine the relationship between AI and publishers in a way that actually works for everyone.
Traditionally users can either read articles or directly or rely on summary tools and interventions like Perplexity to get past the gist. But that’s all changing. And so there’s this third group I’d say that’s emerging, where people are using [AI] agents to research, compare, buy things… Before Comet Plus, publishers rarely saw any revenue from this type of indirect engagement. This new evolution is to really fix that. We make sure that when users are reading articles, asking direct questions or relying on an agent to do something, that [publishers are] all compensated.
So publishers wanted a pay per usage model?
There’s still interest in ad revenue share. They’ve not come and said, ‘Jessica, design something that’s paid per [usage].’ But what I am hearing in between the lines is what has worked really well for them…. I think on platforms like, let’s just say, Apple News, I think publishers might see new readers, and have little visibility into how revenue is actually split. We really want to change that and update that model so that there’s a little bit more visibility and create more additional revenue for the publisher.
How much revenue has Perplexity paid publishers from the existing ad revenue share program?
We want to value the privacy of our publishers, and so we are not disclosing any of those numbers. We’ve been very intentional about our ads product. At the end of the day, we care a lot about that user experience and ensuring that we’re not just overloading and injecting the platform with a terrible ads experience. So I think as a result of that, it’s not a humongous number yet. We do need to scale that up. It has already grown. We have a massive queue of brands that are waiting to work with us, but we just have to make sure that the user experience is not at a detriment to that.
So checks have gone out to publishers?
Checks have gone out.
Doesn’t this new revenue opportunity for publishers rely on people actually using Comet?
Publishers are really eager for a business model that pays, and that’s why we’re rolling out something that’s really tangible right now. Real cash payments starting immediately, and obviously set to grow every month as our Pro and Max subscribers increase. For us, we have some pretty big initiatives tied around our Comet launch and so we are very bullish. We just turned three years old, and we’ve seen adoption skyrocket and Comet is just giving users more ways every day to dig deeper. And so that, to us, is really going to drive that retention and growth.
Is one form of usage (traffic, crawler or agent traffic) weighed more than the other, in terms of the payout to publishers?
The details will be very specific to our partners, but you are thinking about it correctly.
Is Comet Plus a way to compensate publishers to try to overcome the criticism and legal issues around AI companies like Perplexity crawling the web for information?
I think respecting publishers isn’t just good politics. I say this time and time again… We really don’t succeed unless the partners succeed. And I think Comet doesn’t grow if we only wanted to scrape content and then put it behind our paywalls.
I’ve been covering what the IAB Tech Lab is doing to gather publishers and tech companies to propose a solution to AI bot management and compensation. They’ve had some events and created a working group, but I noticed Perplexity hasn’t been a part of those. What do you think of what they’re proposing, and are you interested in supporting what they’re doing?
I think anything that supports publishers, fair compensation, transparency — we’re all open to supporting. We’d be open to [participating].
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