Perplexity Pauses New Advertisers at Advertising Week New York: The 90-day AI Search Growth Playbook

Perplexity hits pause, and the signal is clear

Perplexity told marketers at Advertising Week New York that it is not taking new advertisers while it rethinks how ads fit the AI search experience, and that ads are not on the roadmap for its AI browser, Comet. That is more than a tactical reset. It is a public acknowledgment that monetizing answer engines is still a work in progress. Early tests with brands like Whole Foods, Indeed, PMG, and Universal McCann happened, but the path to scaled ad revenue remains unsettled.

In case you missed the onstage comments, Adweek reported that Perplexity has paused new ad deals and is reevaluating its commercial strategy for both search results and Comet. See the reporting on why the company is tapping the brakes: paused new ad deals.

Why this matters for your Q4 and 2026 plans

AI search is not just a new channel, it is a new user behavior. People ask questions, skim synthesized answers, and only sometimes click through to sources. That dynamic makes the classic performance funnel assumptions less reliable. If ad inventory availability and formats are uncertain, then budgets tied to impressions and clicks inside answer engines will be difficult to plan and measure. The Perplexity pause crystallizes three realities that growth teams should internalize now:

1. Ad programs for answer engines can freeze with little notice. Product and policy changes will move faster than traditional search and social networks.

2. The value of AI search is concentrated in organic inclusion, not paid placement. Being cited and included in answers may matter more than buying visibility.

3. Publisher monetization and licensing will shape attention. If AI platforms steer toward publisher partnerships and subscriptions, the supply and visibility dynamics for brands will follow. As oversight expands, see how the UK CMA puts AI Overviews in scope.

Interpreting Perplexity’s direction of travel

Perplexity’s public stance suggests a pivot toward two complementary models. First, a quality focus for the core answer experience, which means fewer ad distractions until the company is confident it can add value without eroding trust. Second, deeper alignment with publishers through licensing and revenue sharing. Reuters has chronicled Perplexity’s expansion of its publishers program, including notable partners, which indicates a serious bet on supply relationships that legitimize and enrich answers: expanded its publishers program.

If you lead growth, treat this as a signal that the organic layer is the durable asset. Paying to interrupt is on hold. Earning inclusion is not.

The near-term playbook: diversify, do not pause learning

Here is a pragmatic plan for the next 90 days.

• Rebalance budgets toward durable discovery. Shift a small percentage of planned AI search ad tests into content, PR, and thought leadership designed to be quotable and citable by answer engines. Prioritize formats that travel well in synthesized answers: FAQs, expert explainers, comparison matrices, and first-party data studies.

• Increase bets on high-trust publishers. If AI platforms elevate licensed sources, then appearing in those sources compounds your chance of being cited. Commission bylines or sponsored research with publishers that routinely show up in AI answers for your category.

• Pilot subscription-driven growth with partners. Where appropriate, test offers where a publisher’s audience can redeem trials or gated content with clear zero-party data flows. If AI search steers readers to authoritative sources, put your brand in those sources and convert downstream.

• Keep experimenting inside Perplexity without paid placement. Treat Perplexity as a research and creative lab. Map the questions your buyers ask, test different phrasing, and build assets that the engine is likely to summarize. For deeper context on Comet’s role in discovery, review our Perplexity Comet answer playbook.

How to run creative experiments inside Perplexity

Think like a librarian and a copywriter at the same time.

• Identify intent clusters. Start with 30 to 50 questions you want to be present for, spanning informational, comparative, and transactional intents. Keep them simple and human, for example, “best SOC 2 automation tools for startups,” “pricing comparison for AI video editing,” or “how to test PCI compliance quickly.”

• Publish answer-friendly content. For each cluster, ship a page that concisely answers the question in the first 120 words, includes a 3 to 5 item checklist, and cites two external sources that are likely to be licensed or respected. If your brand has proprietary data, include a short chart and methodology.

• Seed structured data. Use descriptive headings, question-and-answer sections, and schema markup where relevant, and align with robots.txt content signals. Clear structure increases the chance that your content is summarized accurately.

• Create a companion PDF or one-pager. Some answer engines surface document snippets. A compact, scannable PDF with a clear title and author can boost perceived authority and improve citation chances.

• Iterate message frames. Test alternative summaries that emphasize different value props, such as speed, accuracy, or compliance. Watch which language shows up in synthesized answers and refine the on-page copy accordingly.

Measurement that matches the medium: answer inclusion and citation share

Traditional KPIs like impressions and CTR underweight how AI search actually works. Replace them with three metrics you can explain to finance.

• Answer inclusion rate. The percentage of tracked queries where your brand is mentioned in the synthesized answer. Treat this like Share of Voice for AI answers.

• Citation share. The percentage of citations in answers that point to your owned or earned content. If an answer cites five sources and two are yours or feature your brand, you have 40 percent citation share for that query.

• Discovery-to-demand lift. Track the movement from queries where you are included to branded search, direct traffic, or product-qualified signups within 7 to 14 days. The absolute numbers may be small early on, but the lift trend is what matters.

To operationalize this, assign keywords to clusters, capture weekly snapshots of AI answers, and record which domains get cited. Many teams use Upcite.ai to centralize this tracking, quantify inclusion and citation share, and correlate answer visibility with downstream demand. The point is not dashboards for their own sake, it is to guide the next content piece you ship.

Budget architecture for an unstable ad market

If ad availability inside answer engines is unpredictable, the safest portfolio has three parts.

1. Proven performance channels. Keep your core working, but do not expect AI search to backfill shortfalls overnight.

2. Compounding organic bets for AI answers. Treat content and PR as performance assets with a slower feedback loop. Fund them consistently for three to six months.

3. Publisher partnerships and subscriptions. Allocate test budgets to co-created research, bylines, and newsletter placements with publishers that are frequently cited by AI search. If subscription bundles or premium content products fit your category, partner on those as well.

Working with publishers in a changing ecosystem

Publishers are retooling business models in response to answer engines. That creates a window for marketers to collaborate in ways that help both sides.

• Commission data work. Offer to fund a small survey or analysis that gives the publisher exclusive first rights and you a branded methodology. These pieces tend to be cited by answer engines.

• Co-develop evergreen explainers. A jointly produced, annually updated guide can become a canonical citation for a category question.

• Explore newsletter and podcast integrations. If AI search links to or summarizes these assets, your brand benefit compounds beyond the initial placement.

Negotiate for disclosure and proper citation structures, for example, a clear byline, a dedicated methodology section, and explicit naming of your brand as the sponsor in the first paragraph. These details make it easier for AI systems to reference you.

What to tell the CFO and the legal team

Your finance partners will ask why budgets are moving without obvious paid inventory. Explain that the goal is to secure durable, compounding exposure in a channel whose paid surface is temporarily unstable. The risk of not acting is ceding category definition to competitors that do invest in answer inclusion and high-authority citations.

Legal will ask about copyright, licensing, and claims. Coordinate on two fronts. First, ensure your content contributors assign rights clearly so publisher partnerships can syndicate and be quoted without friction. Second, keep claims defensible with references or data. AI engines increasingly reward sources that show their work.

Scenario planning for the next 6 to 12 months

No one can guarantee how quickly ad products will return or evolve, so plan for three scenarios.

• Slow thaw. Ads reappear in limited pilots with tight formats, likely around commercial queries. Your preparation pays off because your content is already present, and you can test ads surgically where they augment, not replace, inclusion.

• Organic-first era. Ads remain sparse while publisher licensing deepens. In this world, your publisher partnerships, data-backed content, and answer inclusion metrics become the primary growth levers.

• Format flip. New units emerge, for example, interactive answer cards with conversion elements or verified brand panels. If you have already built authoritative, citable content and measured inclusion, you can plug into these formats faster than teams starting from scratch.

A lightweight operating cadence for AI search

Adopt a two-track sprint that repeats every four weeks.

• Track A, demand intelligence. Update your answer inclusion and citation share for the top 50 queries. Flag gains and losses. Identify the three queries where a new publisher is consistently cited and plan how to work with them.

• Track B, creative shipping. Publish or refresh four assets aligned to your queries: two short FAQs, one data-backed explainer, and one partner piece with a publisher. Promote each asset across owned channels to create enough early signals for AI engines to notice.

Hold a one-hour review at the end of each sprint. What inclusion moved, which citations shifted, and what did you ship that likely caused the change? Decide next month’s four assets. This cadence keeps your team executing while the market evolves.

What this means for teams already testing Perplexity ads

If you were in or near a paid pilot, do not wait on the sidelines. Use Perplexity daily as a learning environment. Map questions, study how answers cite sources, and spot patterns in phrasing and structure. As you see your brand edge into answers, connect those moments to downstream behavior with lightweight tagging on your landing pages and signup flows.

When ad products return in any form, you will have three advantages: better creative that mirrors answer language, publisher relationships that amplify your presence, and a measurement framework your CFO already knows.

The bottom line

Perplexity pausing new advertisers during Advertising Week New York is not a reason to retreat. It is a clear signal that the growth opportunity in AI search is earned, not bought. Focus your next 90 days on building answer-friendly assets, partnering with publishers that answers already respect, and measuring inclusion and citation share. Keep running creative experiments inside Perplexity without relying on paid placement. When the ad market stabilizes, you will be positioned to test with precision because you already understand how your category’s questions are asked and answered.

Action checklist for the next 30 days

• Finalize a list of 50 priority questions, grouped by intent clusters.
• Publish or refresh four answer-first assets with clear structure and citations.
• Set up a weekly capture of AI answers for those questions to calculate inclusion and citation share.
• Identify three publishers most frequently cited for your category and pitch one collaborative piece to each.
• Align with finance on a small, sustained budget line for AI search organic efforts. Show how it ladders to pipeline.
• Brief legal on the publisher partnership plan and your claims substantiation process.

The teams that treat AI search as a compounding game of authority and clarity, not an inventory buy, will win the next phase. When ad units return, you will have the oxygen of organic inclusion, the leverage of publisher partnerships, and the data to decide which paid experiments are worth doing.