What happened
- Ads launched in November 2024.
- In February 2026, the Financial Times reported that Perplexity would wind its ad programme down by the end of 2026.
- Executives said ads risk making users "suspicious of everything", and that users need to believe they're getting the best possible answer.
What it means
- Don't plan new ad budgets for Perplexity.
- Do track Perplexity answers. It still answers B2B research questions and cites sources openly.
- Perplexity cites differently. In one 2026 study, Perplexity cited vendor pages less often than ChatGPT (12% vs 24%) and was the only engine that cited Reddit.
How to get named in Perplexity
- Be present in independent articles and communities that answer your category's questions.
- Keep your own pages factual and easy to quote.
- Track Perplexity alongside ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Copilot.
Tracking Perplexity
- Include Perplexity in your daily or weekly tracked questions.
- Record which pages it cites for your category; they often differ from ChatGPT's.
- Watch for perplexity.ai referrals in analytics.
Questions
Did Perplexity ads work for B2B?
There's little published B2B data. The programme is now being wound down, so the question matters less than being cited.
Will Perplexity bring ads back?
Possibly; plans change. For now, plan Perplexity as an organic channel.
Are Perplexity's sources easier to get into?
They're different: in one 2026 study Perplexity cited vendor pages less than ChatGPT and was the only engine citing Reddit.
What Perplexity's decision says about the market
Perplexity's move highlights a tension every AI assistant faces: ads bring revenue, but trust in answers is the product. OpenAI's response has been to keep ads visibly separate and to state that they don't influence answers. Advertisers should expect platforms to protect that separation, which means ads will stay clearly labelled and answers will stay hard to buy.
The B2B takeaway
For any AI platform, the durable asset is being named in the answer. Ads can supplement that where they exist, but plans that depend only on ads are exposed to platform decisions like Perplexity's.
Start here: Display advertising vs AI ads. More articles in AI ads vs other channels.