Perplexity Will Pay Publishers With New Comet Plus Plan

Earlier this week, Perplexity announced a new subscription plan called Comet Plus. People who sign up will receive access to high-quality content from trusted publishers and brands, and participating websites will be paid when people read their work via Comet.

Competing with the likes of Google, Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT, Perplexity has become the first AI engine to pay publishers for using their content in search results.

Participating publishers, journalists, and blogs will get paid based on three types of traffic:

• Page visits
• Citations in AI search results
• Agent actions (when content is used by Comet’s AI assistant)

Perplexity’s blog post described the reasoning behind the new revenue model:

“The revenue allocation recognizes the reality that users now choose how they want to consume information: browsing manually, asking for AI-generated answers, or deploying agents for complex tasks.”

Revenue from Perplexity’s subscription plans (including Pro, Max, and Comet Plus) will be split 80/20, with 80% going to publishers. This means your website could receive a regular income stream based on user activity and how Perplexity’s AI uses your content.

With this revenue model, your site’s monetization options expand – you’ll get paid for visits, citations, and agent actions, not just traditional clicks.

If you’re interested, you can email publishers@perplexity.ai to request to join the program. However, the opportunity isn’t widely available yet, and there’s no indication of how many publishers Perplexity will accept into the program right now.

According to an interview between Digiday and Jessica Chan, Perplexity’s Head of Publisher Partnerships, the new revenue model is a strategic one. Chan says:

“I think respecting publishers isn’t just good politics. I say this time and time again… We don’t really 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.”

While Google remains the king of search for now, it’s reassuring to see websites receive compensation from Perplexity if AI uses their content, especially as companies scramble to adapt content to the AI-focused search landscape.

That said, Comet Plus doesn’t solve all of the concerns website owners have regarding AI using their content. Yes, publishers will get paid for that usage now, but only when searchers are directly using Perplexity’s Comet browser, and the AI-generated summary could still keep traffic away from your site.

The move could also be a peace offering by Perplexity as it faces lawsuits from prominent publishers, including Forbes and The New York Times, over alleged unauthorized use of copyrighted content.

Of course, this revenue model is still in its infancy. Whether or not it works, and website owners see any real benefit from it (besides payment), will be seen with time.