Exploring the Use of AI in Marketing with Perplexity

Perplexity AI defines itself as “a conversational search engine that answers queries using natural language predictive text, utilizing sources from the web.” You can read a bit more here. One of Perplexity’s prominent features is that it provides links back to its sources. This might help you reference real sources and give you greater confidence that your AI has not hallucinated its response. It is also conversational, making it easy to use, often suggesting possible follow-up questions for you.

One particularly useful feature for educators is Perplexity’s ‘“Discover Daily Podcast” which often covers topics directly relevant to marketing. The podcast is generated by AI but its voice sounds very natural. Each episode is about 7 minutes in length and includes male (Alex) and female (Sienna) hosts.  The focus is on tech, science and culture, drawing from Perplexity’s Discover feed.

I wanted to share how the Perplexity product line has helped me come up with ideas I bring to my marketing class. It started with a podcast story about Roblox, a gaming platform that allows for user-created games. It has become popular with young people. Of its 16+ million users, about 58% are under age 16, 42% under age 13, but the 17-24 year old age group is its fastest growing segment. The platform has recently integrated a generative AI tool, which I learned about on the podcast and then through the Perplexity link in “Roblox Builds AI World Model.”

Right on the article page is a pop-up that says “Ask follow-up.” So I asked “Do you have other examples of companies that have added AI to their products?” To see Perplexity’s examples of 10 other companies that are integrating AI, go to this link. Chapter 8 (Product chapter) of Essentials of Marketing, includes a section “Technology and Intelligent Agents Add Value to Products” that explains how many products supplement a core product with technology to add value. Some of the AI examples Perplexity suggested will go into next edition will include many AI examples. But if you want to include some of those in your lecture on Product (or Chapter 12 on retail, as several of the examples are for retailers), you can check that link.