Perplexity blocks publisher ads designed for AI bots

Perplexity rejects ads targeting AI agents

Perplexity has begun blocking a new form of advertising specifically designed to be read by AI bots, throwing cold water on an experiment that had sparked debate about the future of AI-driven marketing.

The AI search company is preventing ads placed on Time magazine's website from influencing its models, according to a report first published by Digiday. In a statement, Perplexity warned publishers that running what it calls "deceptive advertising" could result in them being downranked in its search index.

The controversy centers on "Agent Ads," a format created by adtech company Mobian. Time recently began creating stripped-down, text-only versions of its webpages specifically for AI crawlers to read, separate from what human visitors see. These pages include blocks of FAQ-style text containing facts about advertised brands.

Brands including Ally Bank and the Project Management Institute have been testing the format. The concept is that these ads could help companies leverage the authority of publishers like Time and improve their chances of appearing accurately in AI chatbot responses.

The cloaking accusation

Perplexity spokesman Jesse Dwyer said the practice amounts to "cloaking" — serving different content to bots than to people — which search engines have long penalized.

"You can't just rebrand spam," Dwyer said. "If the ads are so helpful, why not just put them right on the site for everyone to see?"

Mobian CEO Jonah Goodhart pushed back on the characterization, saying agent ads are clearly labeled and present cited, verifiable facts that AI models can choose whether to use. "This is the opposite of deception," Goodhart said.

Time COO Mark Howard said the publisher has contacted Perplexity and looks forward to "a constructive dialogue about the standards and safeguards that will allow advertising and AI to develop responsibly together."

Other platforms stay silent

OpenAI and Google declined to comment on whether they would follow Perplexity's lead in blocking these ads. Anthropic did not respond to questions.

The silence from major AI platforms leaves open the question of whether agent advertising will gain traction or face industry-wide resistance.

Menaka Gopinath, CMO of the Project Management Institute, described the experiment as part of a "learning journey" to understand how information surfaces in AI-driven environments.

Why it matters

The clash reveals fundamental tensions about how advertising will work in an AI-mediated internet. Publishers are searching for new revenue models as AI platforms increasingly serve as intermediaries between content and readers. But AI companies appear wary of allowing advertising to influence their outputs, particularly through techniques that could be seen as manipulative. How this debate resolves will shape both the economics of online publishing and the integrity of AI-generated information.

Details were first reported by Digiday and Business Insider.