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AI is everywhere, in many of the products and services we use daily. It’s the invisible engine optimizing your morning commute on Google Maps, the predictive text smoothing out your emails in Gmail, and the recommendation algorithm that hand-picks your next favourite song on Spotify.
This integration has moved from simple 'features' to proactive 'services' that anticipate your needs before you even ask."
If Elon had his way, it would be in our heads...ok, that is a truly scary thought. Whether you're looking at it as a medical miracle or a sci-fi nightmare, Musk’s vision for Neuralink has moved surprisingly fast from 'crazy idea' to 'active clinical trial.
By now, anyone working in the advertising industry has heard that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is in the testing phase (in the US) with a select group of agencies and brands. This means that we are not just in a major AI war, but we are now in the midst of an AI-advertising war between the traditional search giants and the new conversational challengers.
This "war" officially escalated on February 9, 2026, when OpenAI began rolling out sponsored placements to its Free and Go users in the US. Unlike the keyword-based auctions we've lived with for 20 years, this new front is being fought over Conversational Intent.
However, Perplexity is abandoning its advertising efforts, cautioning that accompanying chatbot answers with ads could lead users to distrust the product.
“Including ads in conversations with Claude would be incompatible with what we want Claude to be: a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking,” Anthropic shared in a letter earlier this month, adding that even if the ads don’t influence AI responses, they would still “introduce an incentive to optimize for engagement—for the amount of time people spend using Claude and how often they return. These metrics aren’t necessarily aligned with being genuinely helpful.”
Perplexity was one of the first major AI providers to introduce ads into its product, but they began phasing them out late last year, and executives now seem to have shifted their thinking to align more with Anthropic’s camp.
On Tuesday, executives confirmed to the Financial Times that Perplexity would no longer pursue advertising further, citing trust and accuracy as the cornerstones of its business.
The company reports having more than 100 million users and annualized revenue of about $200 million, driven largely by paid tiers ranging from $20 to $200 per month. It also offers a free version to attract new users. Executives said the decision to forgo advertising reflects a deliberate choice to prioritize the product’s reliability over ad-based income.
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