The missed opportunity of perplexity?

Perplexity has an opportunity – and many reasons – to be the LLM adapted to publishers. Unlike the training and license agreements in the form of a favored lump sum -form by Amazon, Meta and Openai, these are income sharing models that encourage him to continue to compensate for publishers.

But there are major obstacles. In theory, the revenue sharing model around the Comet subscription level more perplexity announced this week seems fairly well: publishers are paid according to the frequency to which their content is visited by humans and crawled by bots on its browser comet supplied by AI.

It is a reflection of the latest trend in AI license agreements between platforms and publishers: the transition to models based on use. The IAB technology laboratory is developing a mechanism for this.

Some publishing leaders are optimistic – at least initially. But so far, perplexity has not fully led to this opportunity.

Two publishing leaders who spoke in Digiday said they had not yet met perplexity representatives to hear more details on Comet Plus. The perplexity did not respond to messages on its income sharing programs, said publishing officials in Digiday. (Perhaps the slow communication is due to the fact that the publisher’s publisher’s partnership team is made up of a single person.)

We still do not know how much income is really paid to publishers of the Perplexity advertising income program. And perplexity is struck by the legal proceedings and threats of the publishers, due to the ignorance of the requests not to scratch their content sites without compensation.

As a leader said Digiday, the “devil is in detail”.

Some publishing leaders are skeptical about the fact that this model will really be the content of scratching the perplexity.

First of all, it relies on users using the comet. Perplexity has not shared user figures since the navigator last month was launched to subscribers of its maximum $ 200 plan per month.

“The importance will be determined by the effectiveness of market penetration that perplexity obtains the comet’s navigator,” said Charles Muselli, vice-president of commercial development at Entrepreneur Media.

And while the person responsible for the partnerships of Perplexity publishers, Jessica Chan, recently told Digiday that this new income sharing model helps bring transparency to the relationship between publishers and AI companies, managers are not so safe, wondering how income will be divided among them. The quantity of participants in the Perplexity publishers’ program to do is not clear, although Chan said that she could see him in the “millions”.

This new model seems more developed than the advertising revenue sharing program that Perplexity launched last year, mainly because the company puts aside a specific money pool in which they can operate, members of the publishing members told Digiday. While there is not clear how many perplexity income has really given publishers so far from its advertising revenue program. Chan refused to comment, but admitted that the advertising activity of the company was still emerging.

Digiday contacted eight participants in the Perplexity publishers’ program and asked questions about the income they saw. Five refused to answer and two did not respond before the time of publication.

The accent put by Perplexity on research and navigators fueled by the AI ​​(Perplexity recently made an offer to buy the Google Chrome browser for $ 34.5 billion) – again, in theory – would solve some of the problems that maintain publishers at night since the emergence of AI: how people will find and consume their content, and how they will be paid for AI to this content.

The fact that the LLM of Perplexity is added to other platforms other than his via an APA API AI means that publishers have the possibility of putting their content in front of people in a number of different spaces. (For example, the Zoom Chatbot AI can give questions in real time to questions – fueled by the LLM of Perplexity – and links to publishers as sources.)

Perplexity also does not have the best reputation. Businesses like BBC, Forbes and Raptive have said that Perplexity robots are bypassing blocks like robots.

News Corp. takes perplexity before the courts for these copyright issues. Two of the largest media groups in Japan, Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun, announced this week that they were also continuing perplexity.

So why are publishing leaders always interested in extending their relationship with perplexity, despite all that?

“By working in close collaboration with some of these large AI companies, you choose a way. You bet on how your relationship will be with this particular platform,” said Muselli.

Jacob Salamon, vice-president of commercial development in trusted media brands, suggested that legal pressure has pushed the perplexity to provide more remuneration to publishers, to withdraw a page from the other models for the emerging use of cloudflare and tolls, and programs for advertising revenue from Prorata.

“Perplexity probably marks its own flags here to get ahead of potential disputes and establish direct relations with publishers,” said Salamon. “Overall, very exciting things.”

What we heard

“We have lost around 50% of our traffic, we have stabilized and have been there for a long time … My work is, how can we extract more money by user? And that’s where we did a decent job. Have we recovered everything? No, but … we have improved our income by 40%. ”

– An executive of the edition speaking during the last virtual town halls with closed doors in Digiday last week.

Numbers to know

89%: the decrease in the percentage of Google research traffic to the DMG media since the publication of IA previews.

52%: the percentage of drop in chatgpt reference traffic in the last month, according to a deep analysis.

⅔: the drop in the number of AD pages in the September issue of Vogue in the last decade.

180: The number of countries that now have access to the research experience fueled by Google, in AI mode.

What we have covered

How a creator has built a six -digit career on Tiktok without signing sponsors

• Tiktok Live was a key engine of commercial growth of Gabriella Gomez as a creator. His ability to use live gifts to monetize his daily Tiktok Livestreams allowed him to avoid counting on sponsorships.
• Live gifts currently represent 90% of his income, earning more than $ 766,000 thanks to the live gift function of Tiktok since June 2024.

Learn more about the live Tiktok strategy of Gomez here.

How the new Perplexity income model works, according to its manager of publishers’s partnerships

• Perplexity opens a 42.5 million dollars pool to publishers, from which they can draw and be paid from direct traffic, crawler and AI agent via the PERPLEXity web browser.
• Jessica Chan, responsible for the partnerships of Perplexity publishers, said that publishers could bear “millions” of this program.

Find out more to know how the new Perplexity publisher’s income model works in Q&A with Chan here.

The new Complex application is the future of his business, says the CEO

• Mobile applications emerge as a channel where publishers see new potential to reach readers directly in the AI ​​era. Complex launched a new application on August 5.
• “All our future -oriented things will all be focused on this application,” said the CEO of Complex.

Find out more about the evolutionary strategy of complex around its application here.

WTF is a license to put AI?

• The AI ​​license agreements between platforms and publishers are starting to move to dynamic models based on use.
• The unique flat -rate payments were released. Recurrent license agreements based on use are found.

Learn more about this change in AI license agreements here.

What we read

Can the information industry stop the Flight of AI?

Adam Lashinsky, editor -in -chief of the San Francisco standard, examines the battle between the publishers and the platforms of this Washington Post column. He underlines the disputes, legislation and lobbying efforts – but believes that the prospects of the commercial models of publishers are intimidating.

New TV presenter Chris Wallace is quietly advising the new owner of CBS News

Chris Wallace acts as a News and Media Investments advisor at Redbird Capital Partners, the New York Times reported. The company is a major investor in Skydance, who recently bought the parent of CBS, Paramount.

Wired and business insider delete ai articles written by freelancer

The two publications are among a certain number of titles which have deleted the articles submitted by a freelancer, after having discovered that the stories were generated by AI technology and full of errors and hallucinations, Press Gazette reported.

Dow Jones and Wikipedia have signed an agreement

Wikipedia publishers will now have access to Dow Jones content, through titles such as Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Marketwatch and Investor’s Business Daily.

Time obtains a new editor -in -chief

Alex Altman was promoted to editor in Time, the EIC Sam Jacobs announced in a service note. Based in San Francisco, his responsibilities will include supervision of the coverage of the influence of Silicon Valley.