Q&A with Jessica Chan, Perplexity’s head of publisher partnerships

The new wave of publishers that have signed onto Perplexity’s program (which also includes DPReview, Mexico News Daily, Minkabu Infonoid, NewsPicks, Prisa Media, RTL Germany brands stern and ntv, Adweek and World History Encyclopedia) join media companies like Time, Fortune and Der Spiegel.

Publishers get a cut of revenue from advertising served on Perplexity’s AI-powered search engine platform — which just launched last month — as well as access to data analytics, Perplexity’s APIs and its paid tier Enterprise Pro.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you explain how publishers are making money from Perplexity?

I can’t disclose specifics around [revenue share numbers], but when we monetize on an answer page [with advertising], and a publisher is part of the program, they would receive a cut of that revenue.

So if a publisher is surfaced as part of the answer to a user’s question and an ad is served on that page, the publisher makes money from that ad? Are publishers making money from this yet?

Correct. … They are starting to see money come in.

What if multiple publishers are surfaced in an answer to a question? Do they all get paid?

Any publisher that’s part of the program — if they’re cited, whether they’re the first slot, or whether they’re the last lot — they would receive a cut of the revenue share.

How much are they getting? Is any other money changing hands between publishers and Perplexity when joining the program?

I can’t give specifics.

Yes.

In conversations you’re having with publishers, what other benefits are they asking for that you’re planning on adding to the program?

Part of my mandate is to really grow and evolve this program. This is really just the first iteration. I’m looking forward to bringing on more partners early next year, and then working with our partners across different product collaborations as a benefit. For example, analytics … wasn’t something that was available [when we first launched the program], and I’ve worked very closely with our product team to bring that to life.

Some other examples may be collaborations across our Discover page feature … which is curated currently by individuals. Also, we’re still early on the ad side, but I think that there could be some interesting things that can be done in terms of ad selling with publishers as well. … The best way to frame it would be where publishers can have a little bit more control on things that they’re doing from a collaboration standpoint, as opposed to just enabling their content on our platform.

So giving publishers more levers to control what content they’re sharing with Perplexity?

It could be what content. It’s still too early [to say].

How are publishers using Perplexity’s APIs? What are they building?

[I can’t] share specific names, but I can tell you of the cohort that we had initially launched with, a couple of the publishers are in the final works of integrating the AI. … The ways in which we’ve seen so far are basically surfacing chatbots to help answer questions that a user or a customer might come to a publisher site and ask a question about. We actually make our related questions functionality available through the API as well. … The idea being that somebody reads an article on a site, [and publishers] can actually surface up related questions related to that story to help the user learn more about that topic or that story and/or spend more time on their site.

In the format of a chatbot?

That’s the general format that some of the publishers are exploring [right now]. We’re hoping to have a couple of them live very soon. I don’t want to commit to a timeframe, but probably early next year for sure.

How are you receiving feedback from publisher partners?

Frankly, it hasn’t been streamlined yet, since I am a one woman show. But I do have consistent conversations with our product partners to understand the feedback. But at some point, in order for us to scale it, I think there’s a combination of knowledge groups and then potentially growing the team.

Any plans in the near future to hire more people to join your team?

Not [in] the immediate future. But … I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime early next year.

What kind of data analytics are now provided to publishers?

We would provide our publisher partners with access to a data dashboard. Right now it’s an early iteration, but the idea being that they obviously need to see when they’re referenced and when we’re monetizing that, so that the payouts are appropriate. And then also queries that they’re showing up in to get an idea of the category that they’re falling in. The longer term idea is that at some point, once they start to have some of these analytics, [they] can think about ways in which they can optimize their presence on Perplexity as well. 

What do you mean by that?

Let’s just say the publisher sees that their content is surfacing a lot against travel queries, [and] potentially working with us to crawl or surface up more travel content to optimize for that. 

Are publishers that join Perplexity’s program prioritized by Perplexity’s search algorithm?

The short answer is, no. Our algorithm does its magic, and whether a partner is in the program or not doesn’t mean that they surface higher or lower. Now, one thing that could potentially be a benefit [that we offer] that I’m also exploring is [we maybe give a] publisher a badge if they surface and they’re in the program to encourage click through — something like that. But outside of that, we don’t manipulate the actual algorithm.

Given the news that Amazon is also trying to woo publishers, what does Perplexity offer that’s different from others in this AI tech space as it gets more competitive?

First and foremost, the revenue share. As we continue to scale up, the ad revenue is just going to continue to scale up as well. That’s something that a lot of the other platforms have already outwardly said they’re not going to do. And personally, the relationship building. I think that is core to who I am and core to what I care about. … We’re not about just writing a one-time check, getting content and then, one and done. It’s about the longterm sustainability, which I think is reflective in the structure around the ad revenue share, the way that we’re thinking about partners, managing partners, and product collaborations.

In conversations with publishers, have you had to deal with any repercussions or questions as a result of News Corp’s lawsuit against Perplexity?

The one lawsuit comes up, but we’ve addressed it publicly. I actually feel, on the contrary, we continue to actually see a lot of excitement from publishers across the globe. 

CJR just released a report saying ChatGPT is misrepresenting publishers’ content. How do you ensure that you’re keeping the integrity of publishers’ content when they join Perplexity’s platform?

I think the AI platforms are going to continue to learn and evolve and get better. I don’t think anybody is perfect right now. For any AI company to say that they are ‘perfect’ is misinformation. Some of the things that we think about are mechanisms so that we can assuage some of those concerns. So if something is, for example, misrepresented or called out incorrectly, working with the publishers in a very turnkey fashion to address it right away. 

Has that happened yet?

Fortunately, not yet. We haven’t had any of those issues yet.