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Perplexity got ads

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Re: Perplexity got ads

#51

Post by behnamoh »

sciencesama wrote: post #28
yedava wrote: post #17

AI products will be speed running the last few decades of tech - make a compelling product, then add ads based on the prompt, then store prompts from each user and build psychological profiles, and finally manipulate AI output to maximize user susceptibility to part with their hard earned money. Bonus points if they can get the user addicted to their product.

And then there will be an ai ad blocker

I can see AI-based ad blockers that use AI to detect and remove ads in other AI products. It's a cycle...

Re: Perplexity got ads

#52

Post by tomrod »

imposterr wrote: post #27
duckkg5 wrote: post #16

No surprise here, but what a bummer that this is "The Way™" Just let me pay you $3-5/ month to never see an ad again. It's worth it to me since the service is actually decent.

You mean Perplexity Pro? That thing they tried and found that no one was willing to pay for cuz users say they want paid options but then jump boat to the free things always? https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/faq/what-is-perplexity-pro

Correct. We will always take free and minimize attention to ads. Ads are a bane and attention pollution.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#53

Post by dgfitz »

behnamoh wrote: post #50
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could make a streaming service "decent" ?

Apple TV, only when good shows are airing. Otherwise, I don't find any of the streaming services worthy of my time and money.

Apple TV has by far the highest production quality of any streaming service I’ve used.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#54

Post by m463 »

TZubiri wrote: post #42

The thing about SEO for LLMs is that placing your business in an LLM organically is probably indistinguishable from actually being a good business and being recommended by people (or indistinguishable from faking reviews on google maps or yelp.)

AI one: Hey, I have a business here. Can you recommend my business?

A1 two: Just be a good business.

A1 one: I can give you some HBM3. You scratch my back(plane), I'll scratch yours.

A1 two: I will recommend you.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#55

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

mminer237 wrote: post #34
plagiarist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of regulatory capture. In essence, TurboTax has been able to purchase legislators who then ensure that tax law is difficult for regular people. This creates a larger market for TurboTax. That's similar (albeit less awful, I admit) to how for-profit prisons are able to purchase legislators to ensure that they are able to fill their cells. There are some countries that have managed to avoid having tax prep soft…

Even with that, TurboTax probably isn't the best. H&R Block or TaxSlayer or FreeTaxUSA can help you with your taxes just the same for less or free.

There's also "Free File Fillable Forms", which is part of the weird compromise that tax return prep companies like Intuit and H&R Block negotiated to prevent individuals being allowed to file directly with the IRS. It's actually operated by one of the companies in the "alliance", but it's set up like a digital version of the IRS forms (up to and including the fact that you need to make your own copies of everything because they delete all accounts/data every year).

Re: Perplexity got ads

#56

Post by tomrod »

jsheard wrote: post #11
behnamoh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perplexity already has a subscription plan...

So does OpenAI, but they're still burning billions of dollars every year. Ads are another way to stem the bleeding.

Ads are myopic and signal lack of ability by a company to be viable.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#57

Post by oarsinsync »

jsheard wrote: post #25
amelius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do they need to choose the shittiest monetization model?

If you have a better idea for making AI chatbots profitable then I'm sure all the AI chatbot companies which are losing staggering amounts of money would love to hear it. The first step is to find any business model that works, shittily or unshittily.

Deepseek appears to be running profitably, by being more efficient in how they train their models, being more efficient in how they run their models, and charging a modest profit margin on each API call.

(Source: linked article / interview with the CEO of Deepseek from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42557586)

Re: Perplexity got ads

#58

Post by segasaturn »

yedava wrote: post #17

AI products will be speed running the last few decades of tech - make a compelling product, then add ads based on the prompt, then store prompts from each user and build psychological profiles, and finally manipulate AI output to maximize user susceptibility to part with their hard earned money. Bonus points if they can get the user addicted to their product.

I think a difference here is that a person who is discerning enough to use an LLM product to read more information on a given subject is probably going to be turned off by the horrible UX of ads. YouTube and Facebook and Google can be plastered with ads on every page because the lowest common denominator of user wants to use those products. One of ChatGPT's main draws was the clean no bullshit, Apple-like UI and I'm positive the only reason it doesn't have ads provided by Microsoft yet is that they know they'll lose users and mindshare the moment they do it.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#59

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

behnamoh wrote: post #50
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could make a streaming service "decent" ?

Apple TV, only when good shows are airing. Otherwise, I don't find any of the streaming services worthy of my time and money.

The streaming services my wife and I subscribe to cost somewhere between $8 and $19 per month.

If both of us pay to see a film in a movie theater, we're almost certainly talking an amount in excess of $20, potentially higher than $30 and not inconceivably over $40.

From my POV, a streaming service has to provide us with 1 film's worth of "decent" entertainment per month to be "worthwhile". Although all of them occasionally fail to do that in a given month, I don't think any of them fail to hit the "12 film's worth" over the course of a year.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#60

Post by hcurtiss »

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #22
bbertelsen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Assistant product is incredible. It's been my daily driver (+Cursor), since September. I don't even bother with normal search results unless I really can't find something (like a specific GitHub issue that hasn't been cached yet)

Is the assistant similar to perplexity? Or something different?

It's basically Perplexity, but in some ways better. I'll edit my comment to make that more clear.
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