Squid Game Star Ditches ‘Poogle’, Finds Answers With Perplexity

AI search engine Perplexity recently released an engaging advertisement that featured the unique advantages of its app and compared it to Google Search.

The ad features Korean actor Lee Jung-jae, known for his role in the TV series Squid Game. In the advertisement, Lee finds himself locked in a mysterious room, where he must solve a series of trivia questions displayed on a screen in order to escape.

Initially, the actor opens ‘Poogle’, a humorous take on Google, on his phone and gets bombarded with search results. Frustrated, he turns to the Perplexity app, which immediately launches with its voice assistant mode. With a simple voice command, he asks the AI for the answers.

In one of the standout moments of the ad, Jung-jae was asked, “How do I make cheese stick to a pizza?” To this, Perplexity AI responds, “Don't use glue”, after offering an actual solution. Notably, this was a humorous reference to a mishap from 2024, when Google’s AI overview suggested using “glue” to make cheese stick on pizza. 

Adweek reported that this ad is part of a year-long partnership between Perplexity and Jung-jae’s management company, Artist United. It also stated that Jung-jae’s company has integrated Perplexity’s Enterprise Pro tier into its workflows for research, drafting, and API-based integration.

Dmitry Shevelenko, chief business officer of Perplexity, told Adweek that this was an organic extension of the partnership rather than a cost-offsetting tactic. He added, “This is a major ad purchase for us.”

Along with the advertisement campaign, Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, took to X and announced that its ‘Ask Perplexity’ handle on X is now capable of ingesting videos and offering explanations.

Considering the AI startup is already on a roll, the ad campaign should be a cherry on top. However, Google’s new AI mode in search could make the ad irrelevant sooner rather than later.