By Samuel Nwite
Publication Date: 2026-08-14 01:22:00
An emerging advertising format designed specifically for artificial intelligence agents is facing an early test after Perplexity moved to prevent the ads from influencing its AI systems, raising questions about whether publishers can turn chatbot visibility into a new advertising market.
Brands including Ally Bank and the Project Management Institute have been testing the format on Time’s website through an initiative designed to present advertisements directly to AI crawlers rather than human readers.
The experiment has opened a broader debate across the advertising industry over whether so-called “Agent Ads” can become a viable marketing channel or whether AI companies will block the practice as an attempt to manipulate their search and answer systems.
Perplexity has already taken a hard line.
The AI search company has begun preventing the advertisements from influencing its models, according to Digiday. Perplexity also warned publishers that running what it considers “deceptive advertising” could lead to lower rankings in its search index.
At the center of the dispute is a fundamental question about how information should be presented to AI systems. Time has created stripped-down, text-only versions of some webpages intended specifically for AI agents. The…
