Companies buy Perplexity for search. Ramp's October 2026 AI category data names it the most-purchased Search and Research AI vendor, bought by 95% of that category's buyers.
Its ads sell something else. 85% of the Meta ads running right now sell Computer. "Introducing Computer" is the headline on 356 of Perplexity's 1,775 Meta ads. Search gets 15% of the live ads.
And the two launches ran opposite trades. Comet, the browser, was given away: 89% of its ads say free, and none are live. Computer is being sold: 5% say free, and 334 are live.
Two launches, a year apart. 910 ads in September and October 2025, 833 of them for the Comet browser. 381 in August and September 2026, 332 of them for Computer. Between them, a trickle.
Perplexity ads: key findings
- 507 live Meta ads as of 13 October 2026, out of at least 1,775 run since April 2025
- 85% of live Meta ads sell Computer; 15% sell search
- 356 ads headline "Introducing Computer"; 508 mention Computer in the headline, copy or lander
- Comet was given away: 89% of 836 Comet ads say free, the median ad ran 6 days, none are live
- Computer is sold: 5% of 508 ads say free, all in English, 334 live, the median ended ad ran 39 days
- 910 ads in September and October 2025; 381 in August and September 2026; 270 in the busiest week
- 166 ads send people to a task lander under /gen/, across 24 different jobs
- 578 ads go to a perplexity.sng.link app deep link
- 173 ads run on partner and creator pages, 66 different pages
- 292 Spanish and 121 French ads, none for Computer
- Median ended ad lasted 8 days; 1,058 of 1,384 ended ads lasted two weeks or less
- 1,398 LinkedIn ads and 345 Google ads on top
Two launches, and a gap
Comet in autumn 2025, Computer in summer 2026
| Month | Ads launched | What it was |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2025 | 127 | Comet browser (79), unlimited cited answers |
| Oct 2025 | 783 | Comet (754), "Free for you for a limited time" |
| Nov 2025 | 162 | Search, 159 ads |
| Dec 2025 | 94 | Ronaldo lander, 50 ads |
| Jan to Jul 2026 | 193 | Computer from March, 28 to 35 a month |
| Aug 2026 | 182 | Computer launch, 159 ads |
| Sep 2026 | 199 | Computer, task landers, creators |
| Oct 2026 (to the 12th) | 22 | Computer, 21 ads |
Look at the bursts and then look at what is between them. Perplexity does not drip. It holds, then ships. 783 ads in October 2025 alone, 270 of them in the busiest week ever (week 41 of 2025). Then 381 in August and September 2026. 167 launched in the last 30 days, and the busiest week of 2026 was week 35 with 104.
Comet was given away
Comet ran on a free offer. 747 of 836 Comet ads say free. 85 ads send people to a students page, and 36 are headlined "100% free for students". 58 more say "Students: Unlock Perplexity Pro + Comet early - free for a limited time". 111 are headlined "Free for you for a limited time".
Free to students is an acquisition trade. Perplexity is buying the habit before the job. The median Comet ad lived 6 days, and 532 of the 836 ended within a week. Nothing from that burst is live.
Computer: the product behind the product
Given away vs sold
| Measure | Comet | Computer | Search |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta ads | 836 | 508 | 431 |
| Live now | 0 | 334 | 57 |
| Ads that say free | 747 (89%) | 26 (5%) | 188 (44%) |
| Not in English | 258 (31%) | 0 | 188 (44%) |
| Median life of an ended ad | 6 days | 39 days | 12 days |
| On partner and creator pages | 37 (4%) | 93 (18%) | 43 (10%) |
Comet was a download. Free, translated, short-lived. Computer is a purchase. English only, creators on it, and the ads stay up. The free offer is gone and the lander is doing the work.
The copy describes work, not search
Three bodies carry most of the Computer account. "Computer automates work end-to-end. Research, build, and deploy from a single prompt." runs on 99 ads. A longer "Chat gives you answers. Agents can run a task. Computer executes entire workflows" runs on 88. A Shopify version, "20+ AI models run your Shopify store", runs on 79.
That is 266 ads on three bodies. 111 ads mention Shopify. "Your AI team for Shopify" and "Scale your DTC brand with AI" are headlines in their own right.
Perplexity is not selling a better answer box. It is selling a teammate you delegate to.
Personas expressed as jobs
Most brands pick an audience and write to it. Perplexity picks a task and builds a page for it. 166 ads send to a URL under /gen/, and each URL is one job. 95 of those ads are live.
| Lander | Ads |
|---|---|
| job-applications | 47 |
| construction-estimate | 21 |
| property-analysis | 12 |
| video-to-shorts, computer/main | 10 each |
| seo | 9 |
| shopify-store, youtube-channel-optimization | 6 each |
| grant-finder | 5 |
| find-angels, ai-seo, personal-brand-strategy, real estate, construction estimating | 4 each |
| poshmark-audit, slack, daily-brief, signal-inbox | 3 each |
| data-enricher, sponsor-sourcing and four others | 1 to 2 each |
"Get found by recruiters." "Blueprints in. Bid-ready estimates out." Nobody is told they are a job seeker or an estimator. The ad names the work and the right person recognises it. Persona by task.
Where the ads send people
The app, mostly
| Destination | Ads |
|---|---|
| perplexity.ai/grow/comet landers | 828 |
| perplexity.sng.link app deep link | 578 |
| /gen/ task landers | 166 |
| Google Play listing | 90 |
| perplexity.ai/ronaldo | 50 |
| Perplexity home page | 32 |
578 ads, a third of the account, use one app deep link. 349 of them are Computer ads, and it is on 73% of the live ads. Tap the ad and the Perplexity app opens, on the right screen, instead of a web page that asks you to download something. Both iOS and Android paths are in the link.
Faces on one launch, creators on the next
Ronaldo got his own lander and 50 ads in December 2025, headlined "Greatness begins with a question." and "Explore the CR7 Experience only on Perplexity". All 50 have ended. Lewis Hamilton ran 6 ads on a partner page, with "Don't go Plex for Plex with me". Across 80 athlete ads, none sold Computer.
For Computer the faces are creators, not athletes. 173 ads run on 66 partner pages. 93 of them sell Computer, 18% of its ads against 4% for Comet: Cristina Cataman (13), Anton Mehto (10), Financial Wolf (9), Landon Bytheway (8), Edward Sun (6), Sam Parr (4). The copy is a creator workflow: "How I’d run a newsletter - with Perplexity Computer. Comment COMPUTER and I'll send you details." The call to action is a comment, and 32 ads ask for it.
Athletes sell the brand. Creators sell the use case. Perplexity switched casts when the product changed from an answer engine to a worker.
Free gets translated. The worker does not.
The free offers ran in five languages: 292 ads in Spanish, 121 in French, 46 in Italian, 33 in German and 33 in Polish. Mostly the Comet free offer and "Unlimited. Cited. Free." translated line for line: "Ilimitado. Con Fuentes. Gratis." and "Illimité. Avec Sources. Gratuit." All 508 Computer ads are English.
Short lives
1,384 Meta ads have ended. The median one ran 8 days. 1,058 ran 14 days or fewer. 682 ran a week or less.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Ended ads | 1,384 |
| Median life of an ended ad | 8 days |
| Ended within 14 days | 1,058 |
| Ended within 7 days | 682 |
| Median life, Comet / Computer | 6 / 39 days |
| Median age of a live ad | 42 days |
| Oldest live ad started | 24 April 2026 |
Eight days is fast, and Comet drags it down. Perplexity tests, kills and replaces. The ads that survive get a long run: Computer ads that ended lasted 39 days, and the oldest live one started in April. And 166 distinct copy combinations sit behind 1,775 ads, so the same message gets cut a lot of ways.
LinkedIn and Google
The business buyer lives off Meta.
LinkedIn: 1,398 ads, Computer for the enterprise
| Ad type | Ads |
|---|---|
| Single image | 694 |
| Video | 261 |
| Message ad | 218 |
| Document ad | 186 |
| Spotlight, carousel and others | 39 |
713 of the 1,398 mention Computer. "Book a demo." is the headline on 133 ads, and 287 name finance or buyside: "Perplexity Computer for Buyside Institutions" (22), "Perplexity Computer for Professional Finance" (24). The rest sell Perplexity Enterprise to named functions: "See how IT leaders govern AI with Perplexity" (17), "See how legal teams run cited research" (11), "See how ops teams save hours with Perplexity" (6). Document ads carry a statistic: "Only 23% of organizations have scaled AI. See the 7 practices behind Perplexity deployments hitting 80%+ adoption." (15)
The one giveaway is $80 in credits, on 103 ads. Everything else asks for a demo.
Same pattern as Meta: the buyer is a role and the product is a job. 1,253 of the 1,398 are posted by Perplexity itself.
Google: 345 ads, Computer and the API
270 text, 43 image and 32 video ads, shown from April to September 2026. 295 land on the Perplexity home page. Headlines are product names: "Perplexity Computer" (32), "Perplexity API Platform" (9), "Introducing Computer" (7), "Your 24/7 Digital Worker" (6). A description reads "One subscription, every top model. GPT, Claude, and Gemini together." Ads show in the US plus France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.
What actually makes this work
The product changed, so the ads changed with it. A search company that keeps selling search is competing with Google. A company selling a worker is competing for a salary line.
The price changed with it. Comet needed installs, so it was free, translated and gone in 6 days. Computer needs budget, so it is English, creator-fronted and runs for weeks.
Perplexity does not argue the case in one ad. It builds a lander per job and lets the buyer find theirs. Job applications, estimates, property analysis, Shopify. Each one is a small, specific promise.
The 8-day median says the account is a test bench. Nothing is precious. The winners are the ones still running in October.
What I would copy is the sequencing: one big launch, a hold, then 381 ads in two months. And the offer matched to the product. Free for the install, a lander per job for the sale.
Break down your own market
Every number here is from Perplexity's own ads. See the same view for other brands in the Sprites ads hub, then read the teardowns of Viktor, Wispr Flow and Granola. Perplexity's full ad set is on the Perplexity ads page, and creative analytics shows which of your own ads are doing the work. To start, run your first analysis.