Perplexity Killed Its Ads. OpenAI Just Launched Theirs. What Brands Should Do Now.

Two days ago, Perplexity permanently shut down its advertising program. The same week, OpenAI confirmed it’s rolling out ads in ChatGPT. Google, meanwhile, is expanding ads across AI Mode and AI Overviews to over 2 billion monthly users.

These aren’t random business decisions. They’re the first real fractures in how AI search will be monetized, and they have direct consequences for how your brand gets discovered.

If your AI visibility strategy assumes all platforms work the same way, you’re about to get blindsided.

What Actually Happened

Here’s the timeline, compressed:

Perplexity launched sponsored placements in late 2024 with advertisers like Indeed and Whole Foods. By October 2025, it had stopped accepting new advertisers. On February 18, 2026, executives confirmed the exit was permanent. The reasoning was blunt: “A user needs to believe this is the best possible answer.” Ads, even labeled ones, undermine that belief.

OpenAI went the opposite direction. On February 9, Adobe announced it was among the first pilot partners for ads in ChatGPT, targeting free and Go tier users in the U.S. OpenAI’s head of monetization projects this “free user monetization” will generate $1 billion in 2026. With 800 million weekly active users and only 20 million paying subscribers, the math makes sense.

Google has been the most aggressive. Ads now appear in AI Overviews across 200+ countries, reaching over 2 billion users monthly. And on February 11, Google announced a shopping ad format designed specifically for AI Mode, which already has 75 million daily active users.

Anthropic has stayed quiet. Claude remains ad-free, with no announced plans to change that.

The Landscape at a Glance

Platform	Ad Status	Users	Paid Visibility Path
Google AI Overviews	Live, expanding	2B+ monthly	Yes, standard Google Ads
Google AI Mode	Shopping ads launching	75M daily	Yes, shopping ads
ChatGPT	Launching (free/Go tiers)	800M weekly	Coming soon
Perplexity	Permanently removed	100M+ users	None
Claude	Never had ads	Not disclosed	None

This is the new reality. Some AI search platforms will let you buy visibility. Others will force you to earn it.

Why Perplexity’s Decision Matters More Than You Think

Perplexity’s advertising revenue was negligible. The company made roughly $20,000 from ads in 2024 out of $34 million total. By 2025, nearly all of its approximately $200 million in annualized revenue came from subscriptions. Killing ads wasn’t a financial sacrifice. It was a brand positioning move.

But the reasoning matters for everyone in AI search. An executive told Search Engine Land: “We are in the accuracy business, and the business is giving the truth, the right answers.”

That’s the core tension. When an AI platform runs ads, users start wondering whether the answer they’re seeing is the best answer or the one that paid to be there. Even if the ads are clearly labeled and kept separate from responses, the doubt creeps in.

This is why Perplexity framed its exit as being about trust, not revenue. And it’s why brands should pay attention. On ad-free platforms, the recommendations carry more weight precisely because they can’t be bought.

What This Means for Paid AI Search

On the ad-supported side, a new paid channel is opening up. Google’s AI Mode shopping ads and ChatGPT’s sponsored placements will eventually become as routine as Google Search ads are today.

But don’t expect it to work the same way. Traditional search ads intercept intent at a specific moment: someone searches “best CRM,” they see your ad, they click. AI search ads are different. The user is in a conversation. They’re asking follow-up questions, refining their needs, getting synthesized answers. An ad at the bottom of that conversation hits differently than an ad at the top of a search results page.

Early indicators suggest this could go one of two ways:

High trust, high value. If AI platforms get the ad experience right (contextual, non-intrusive, clearly labeled), these ads could outperform traditional search ads because they appear after the AI has already qualified the user’s intent through conversation.
User backlash. If ads feel intrusive or manipulative, users will migrate to ad-free alternatives. Perplexity is betting on exactly this outcome.

For brands with ad budgets, the smart move is to test early. OpenAI’s pilot program is limited, and early advertisers will get data that latecomers won’t. But don’t bet your entire AI visibility strategy on paid placements.

What This Means for Organic AI Visibility

Here’s where it gets interesting for most brands.

On Perplexity and Claude, there is no paid shortcut. Zero. The only way to appear in responses is to earn it through content quality, brand mentions across the web, and the kind of authoritative presence that makes an AI system want to cite you.

On ChatGPT, paid subscribers (Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise) won’t see ads at all. That’s the tier where power users, researchers, and decision-makers live. If you want to reach ChatGPT’s most valuable users, ads won’t help. You need organic visibility.

And on Google, even with ads expanding across AI Overviews and AI Mode, the organic citations within the AI-generated response still carry the most weight. Users know the difference between a sponsored label and a source the AI chose to reference. Earning a citation inside the AI Overview is more valuable than a labeled ad below it.

This creates a counterintuitive dynamic: the more ads appear in AI search, the more valuable organic AI citations become. When users know some results are paid, the unpaid ones look more trustworthy by comparison.

The Strategy Split

Your AI visibility strategy now needs two distinct tracks, and the balance depends on your budget, your industry, and which platforms matter most for your audience.

Track 1: Paid AI Search

This track applies to Google AI Mode/Overviews and (soon) ChatGPT’s free tier.

Start testing now. Google AI Mode shopping ads and ChatGPT’s pilot program are both in early stages. Get data before your competitors do.
Expect different metrics. Click-through rates from AI ads will look different from traditional search ads. The user journey is conversational, not linear. Track downstream engagement, not just clicks.
Budget accordingly. AI search ads are additive. They won’t replace your existing Google Ads budget. Treat them as a new channel, not a reallocation.

Track 2: Earned AI Visibility

This track applies everywhere, but is the only option on Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT’s paid tiers.

Invest in brand mentions. As we covered in our analysis of the Ahrefs 75,000-brand study, branded web mentions correlate 3x more strongly with AI visibility than backlinks. Get your brand discussed across industry publications, forums, and review sites.
Keep content fresh. Stale content decays in AI search faster than in traditional search. Pages not updated quarterly are 3x more likely to lose AI citations.
Optimize for the right platforms. Each AI platform has different behaviors and different source preferences. A strategy that works for Google AI Overviews may not work for Perplexity.
Monitor what AI says about you. You can’t fix what you can’t see. Track your brand’s presence across all platforms, not just the ones with ad dashboards.

The Bigger Picture

The AI search monetization split reveals something deeper about where the industry is headed.

Google and OpenAI are building platforms where attention is the product. They need massive user bases, and ads help subsidize free access. This model prioritizes reach.

Perplexity and Anthropic are building platforms where accuracy is the product. They charge users directly and avoid anything that might compromise trust. This model prioritizes quality.

Both models will coexist. Neither is going away. And for brands, this means the old question of “how do we show up in AI search?” now has a follow-up: “which kind of AI search?”

The brands that figure this out first will have a real advantage. Not just because they’ll show up in more places, but because they’ll show up in the right places with the right approach, whether that’s a well-placed ad in Google AI Mode or an earned citation in Perplexity that no competitor can buy their way into.

The worst strategy right now is to treat all AI search as one thing. It isn’t anymore.

RivalHound tracks your brand’s visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI, Perplexity, and more. Start monitoring to see where you stand.