Srinivas previously predicted advertising would be Perplexity's highly profitable revenue engine, but later argued ads fundamentally corrupt user trust in conversational search products.
THEN · Jun 5, 2024
0:00 / 0:22exact quote · 22.9s
NOW · Jun 15, 2026
0:00 / 0:40exact quote · 40.2s
“I would predict it'll be advertising. If we crack it, yes, it'll be advertising. If we don't crack it, if we are not, if we, if we don't, if we haven't grown to that level in user basin, or if we grew and didn't figure out how to advertise really well, I think it'll be the other two. Either way, we can be profitable. I think with advertising, we can be really, really profitable.”
“And so, uh, the chat interface doesn't capture that user intent, that user behavior right now, which is why it was never a great fit for advertising. And, uh, it also fundamentally corrupts the trust that people have when they go into a product and they want the accurate answer, which is what You know, perplexity is known for. Um, and then you're like, hey, by the way, you know, you asked for the most, um, highest, like, like, best protein shake, but by the way, these are good protein shakes you can check out. Like it, it kind of like hurts the trust that people have in your platform, in your product.”