How Perplexity could bring advertising to its Comet AI browser

Perplexity’s forthcoming AI-powered browser, Comet, could radically reshape search advertising by shifting brands’ attention from consumers to their AI agent representatives. For brands, this could mean rethinking how—and to whom—they target their advertising on the internet. AI agents may soon be deciding which ads to serve users, Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s CEO, has previously suggested. Moreover, Perplexity’s control of a browser, and the browser-level data, could fan the flames of a larger war with Google—the current king of search—potentially shaking up how publishers and advertisers conduct internet ad transactions. Perplexity has shared very few details about the browser since announcing it last month. The AI company, which is in talks to raise new funding for a valuation of $18 billion, declined a request for comment. Even Comet’s release date remains unknown. Still, marketing experts are anticipating what Comet might look like as brands are already reconsidering how to show up on an AI-mediated internet, where hundreds of millions of consumers are using AI tools such as Perplexity, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews to navigate the web—each of which surfaces brands differently in their search results. What advertising could look like on Comet Brands may see a very different advertising landscape on Comet than they have experienced on Chrome or other traditional browsers. This is because Comet will supposedly leverage agentic search, in which users deploy AI agents trained on their preferences to filter content and ads for them. This means advertisers may need to shift their focus from persuading human consumers to understanding how AI-driven intermediaries interact with ads, said Mike Ryan, head of e-commerce insights for Smarter Ecommerce, an ad tech company. Perplexity has not divulged how agents would perceive ads on Comet, but tech insiders have suggested that advertisers will need to target the specific parameters that users have given them. These parameters can reflect any number of users’ preferences, from types of products and price ranges to favorite websites and geographical locations. Perplexity teased how agents could work on behalf of users’ interests via a shopping feature it released in December. Users can upload a picture of an item they want and elaborate their intent in a prompt. An AI agent will then seek out the item online and return relevant information, including visual cards, reviews, pros and cons and the ability to purchase the product directly in the platform. Advertisers are not currently permitted to sponsor any of the agent’s content. Recent news: Adobe has new agentic AI tools for brands Data-Driven Marketing Playbook Join us May 22 in NYC to explore how data powers marketing Learn more here Brands may also need to grapple with another capability of agents: ad-blocking. Agents can be programmed to effectively ignore ads from any brands chosen by the user, and this setting could be kept confidential from brands, Perplexity’s Srinivas said in an interview The Economic Times last December. It’s unclear how Perplexity would stand up a viable advertising model if this were the case, since brands may be unwilling to spend money on ads that have no guarantee of being seen. Moreover, on ads that are accepted by agents, brands may have trouble discerning whether the agents are scam bots, representing no one, or acting on behalf of real consumers. “Bots are already clicking on ads a lot,” Ryan said. “Will these clicks be considered valid? Would brands get a discount on bot clicks?” Despite the role that agents could play on Comet, brands may still be able to reach human users, such as by serving ads on the results page returned by their agents, Ryan said. This would be similar to how advertising works on Perplexity’s current search product, in which brands can sponsor a “related questions” section below the main results, as well as place paid media alongside the results. Perplexity launched its ad business last November with brands including Whole Foods and Indeed, and recently confirmed that less than a dozen marketers are currently testing it. Some in the ad industry, such as Joe Zappa, founder and CEO of ad tech PR agency Sharp Pen Media, have been unimpressed with what they view as a slow start to the consumer AI ad space. “It’s surprising that Perplexity has only been able to sign up a dozen advertisers in several months,” Zappa said. “I would conjecture that what you’re seeing is that it can be very difficult for Silicon Valley tech companies to build advertising businesses.” A new ad format, specialized for an AI agent-powered platform, could go a long way in terms of ginning up excitement for advertisers, Zappa said. Such a product would be feasible because of the depth of information that AI companies are able to gather from users through long and discursive conversations. Whereas Google has needed to rely on shreds of user information to then infer more broadly about their profile, OpenAI and Perplexity have vast logs of deterministic, granular information, from which they could power novel ad products, Zappa said. “This is the kind of thing that advertisers salivate over.” Browser war Smarter Ecommerce’s Ryan agreed that a new ad format built on strong user profiles could be compelling to advertising partners, but hedged the idea with a sobering caveat. “Whether or not this data will be extracted and shared is a different question,” he said. This alludes to a matter of consequence for Comet’s viability as an advertising destination: Is Perplexity going to support a transparent ecosystem for brands and publishers, or will it command a black box? The development of Comet would give Perplexity abundant access to the kinds of browser-level data that helped Google build its ad empire, said Brendan Eich, co-founder and CEO of browser platform Brave. This means that Perplexity would gain more control over its search ecosystem by diminishing its reliance on Google Chrome, which is still the primary starting point for Perplexity users, Eich said. “If you don’t control the whole browser, you’re just a website,” Eich said. OpenAI is also considering building its own browser for similar reasons, The Information previously reported. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. These developments could fan the flames of a browser war, especially as Chrome, the reigning browser king, faces an uncertain future. Earlier this month, the Justice Department doubled down on its intentions to break up Google’s monopoly in online search, which could include a forced sale of Chrome. Given that Perplexity is a challenger, Ryan said, playing nicely with advertising partners may be a competitive advantage. “Perplexity has nothing to lose here and there’s reason to hope,” Ryan said. Indeed, Perplexity has made clear that the strength of its business depends on advertising. And while OpenAI and Google have lobbied the Trump administration to allow their AI models to train on copyrighted data at no cost, Perplexity has rolled out a program to at least split some revenue with publishers whose content appears alongside ads. This effort was announced last summer, in the wake of several publishers bringing lawsuits against Perplexity for copyright infringement. However, Perplexity may also conceal much of its browser-level information and strong-arm advertisers into making unfavorable agreements, as Google has done, said Eric Shaffer, co-founder and CEO of AI software company Agnitio. “It’s really hard to understand Perplexity’s intent with this,” said Shaffer. While Sharp Pen Media’s Zappa said he has conviction that the AI search ad market will explode over the coming years, he expects Perplexity, and OpenAI if it launches a browser, to become the internet’s next generation of walled gardens. “They’re going to have these massive, scaled audiences and an unbelievable amount of information that will drive effective advertising,” Zappa said, “And the same interests [as] Google.”

How Perplexity could bring advertising to its Comet AI browser

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