Perplexity is currently testing the addition of affiliate links to their Discover pages. On some of the pages from their main Discover feed, you can now find product links at the bottom of the articles. For instance, in one example article, there are widgets with buttons for quick checkout, allowing users to select the number of items and press the Buy button. Below these widgets, you can also find reviews and a list of pros and cons.
Additionally, users can check different variants of these products and select other potential items from a list. The Buy button redirects users to another page with a checkout form. Overall, this experiment by Perplexity is quite interesting. In the future, it might allow creators to add affiliate links to their posts to monetize their content. However, it’s still unclear if this feature will become widely available or see a broader rollout.
Previously, Perplexity was working on integrating Shopify into their search functionality. This current feature or test is a significant step towards monetization. It has been known that Perplexity aims to monetize, either by following the Google model with ads or by adopting a different approach. This is likely an early experiment, and it will be interesting to see how users react. Opinions can be controversial, and some people may view affiliate links as ads and dislike them.
Perplexity is not the first AI company to introduce advertisements in their outputs. For example, Bing Copilot has been showing in-line ads for quite some time, which has generated significant anticipation among its user base. It will be intriguing to observe how this situation develops further.
