Perplexity blocks Time's AI-agent ads, calling them deceptive
Less than two weeks after Digiday reported that Time had begun placing ads inside the markdown version of its webpages, the version AI agents read when they crawl the site, Perplexity said it blocks those ads from influencing its own search index. Perplexity chief communications officer Jesse Dwyer told Digiday the company works to protect users from deceptive practices, sponsored or not, and said publishers that deploy markdown ads risk a reputational downgrade, including a hit to their trust score. Neither Perplexity nor Time explained how the blocking works or whether it affects the deals Time already signed with Ally Bank and the Project Management Institute, brands whose FAQ-formatted, brand-approved messaging, built by ad tech firm Mobian, was inserted into Time's markdown pages for AI agents to read as fact.
AI-facing ad placements now carry a platform risk: the engine reading the page can simply decline to count the ad. Robert Webster, founder of AI marketing consultancy TAU, said the internet is splitting into two tracks, one built for human readers and one for AI agents, and companies will keep finding ways to monetize the second before any standard governs it. BCG X partner Rob Derow had already flagged the underlying risk: markdown ads with no rule governing how large language models treat them could be read as a form of cloaking, the SEO practice of showing crawlers content different from what human visitors see. Anyone buying into agent-facing ad formats should treat platform cooperation as a condition of the deal.