In February, Perplexity announced it was building a web browser called ‘Comet’ that will offer an “agentic search” experience. In a recent episode of The Big Picture Network (TBPN) podcast, Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas said the browser will also be designed to gather user data to power a more targeted, premium ad business.

Srinivas said part of the plan for Comet is to collect data on what users do across the internet, TechCrunch reports. He explained that the browser will track user behavior both inside and outside its app, and then use that data to sell “hyper-personalized” ads.

Perplexity’s AI tool only captures part of a user’s online activity. These are mainly prompts that tend to be work-related. “Some of the prompts that people do in these AIs are purely work-related,” Srinivas said. That doesn’t paint a full picture of users’ online behavior.

According to Srinivas, browsing habits outside the app offer much more useful context. Instead of just serving ads based on queries inside Perplexity, the company wants a wider lens. “We want to get data even outside the app to better understand you,” he explained. 

Perplexity is developing Comet to track online purchases, travel bookings, restaurant visits, and time spent on websites. According to Srinivas, Perplexity plans to build better user profiles and show more relevant ads in places like its Discover feed by tracking user behavior more broadly.

The company claims users will accept data tracking in exchange for more relevant ads. Srinivas believes that users will accept the trade-off if the browsing experience is smooth and the ads are relevant. But this is a tough ask in a market where even Google is being pushed on privacy, and where tools like Safari and Firefox have leaned into ad-tracking prevention.

A direct move into ad tech and Google’s territory

Perplexity is stepping into a space dominated by Google. Chrome still commands the browser market—and with it, massive amounts of user data. Google’s entire ad business is built on years of insight into how users interact with the web. Perplexity wants to replicate the kind of data-driven advertising infrastructure that made Google a $2 trillion company. 

‍