Perplexity's AI Employee Never Sleeps!

The AI marketing world just had one of those 24-hour stretches where everything shifts at once — and I'm genuinely thrilled to break it all down for you today. Perplexity just unveiled what might be the most ambitious AI product we've seen this year: an always-on AI operating system that works for you around the clock. Anthropic upgraded Claude to seamlessly move between Excel and PowerPoint in a single conversation. And if you're wondering whether AI advertising inside chatbots is actually happening — Criteo just made it official inside ChatGPT.

We're watching the transition from "AI as a tool" to "AI as a teammate" happen in real time. And for marketers like us? The opportunities are stacking up fast.

📍 In Today's Newsletter:

Let's dive in! 👇

This is a big one. At its inaugural Ask 2026 developer conference in San Francisco, Perplexity unveiled Personal Computer — and it's not hardware. It's software that turns your Mac mini into a persistent, 24/7 AI agent with direct access to your local files, apps, and sessions.

Here's the concept: you describe a goal, and Personal Computer breaks it into tasks, delegates to sub-agents, and keeps the work going — even after you step away. It connects to Gmail, Slack, GitHub, Notion, and Salesforce, monitoring triggers and executing tasks across all of them proactively.

CEO Aravind Srinivas put it simply at the conference: a traditional operating system takes instructions; an AI operating system takes objectives.

What makes this different from ChatGPT or Claude?

This isn't a chatbot you go back and forth with. Personal Computer orchestrates 20 different frontier AI models simultaneously, choosing whichever model is best for each specific task. It runs continuously on a dedicated Mac mini connected to Perplexity's secure servers — and you can control it remotely from any device.

Perplexity claims that in an internal study of over 16,000 queries, their Computer system saved teams $1.6M in labor costs and performed the equivalent of 3.25 years of work in just four weeks. Those are their own internal numbers, so take them with appropriate context — but the ambition here is unmistakable.

The details that matter:

The enterprise play is especially interesting. Computer for Enterprise connects to Snowflake, Salesforce, HubSpot, and hundreds of other platforms via app connectors — so a financial analyst can query revenue data while a sales team pulls CRM insights and competitive context simultaneously.

⚡ QUICK ACTION TIP: Even if you're not ready for Personal Computer, start thinking about which of your recurring marketing tasks could be delegated to an always-on AI agent. List your top 5 time-consuming repetitive tasks — that's your automation roadmap for 2026.

Anthropic just rolled out a significant upgrade that marketers who live in spreadsheets and slide decks will appreciate immediately.

Starting March 11, Claude for Excel and Claude for PowerPoint now share full conversation context across both apps. That means Claude can read cell values, write formulas, and edit slides while remembering everything discussed in either application — no more copying data and re-explaining your objectives when you switch from spreadsheet to presentation.

Here's a practical scenario: a marketing analyst can pull campaign performance data from an open workbook, have Claude build a comparison table in Excel, drop the summary into a client pitch deck, and draft the follow-up email — all without switching tabs or re-explaining the dataset at each step.

The Skills Feature Is the Real Game-Changer

Anthropic also introduced Skills — reusable workflows that teams can save as one-click actions. When someone on your team figures out the optimal way to run a variance analysis or compose a client deck using the firm's template, they save it as a Skill and it becomes instantly repeatable for the whole organization.

Prebuilt Starter Skills include:

✨ For Excel:

✨ For PowerPoint:

Availability: Beta for all paid Claude plan subscribers (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise) on Mac and Windows. The add-ins can also be accessed through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, or Microsoft Foundry.

Worth noting: Claude can only read from and write to files currently open in Excel or PowerPoint. It can't create, open, or switch files directly from the add-ins. Chat history for cross-app sessions also doesn't save between sessions.

Here's what else is shaping the AI marketing landscape right now:

Criteo is now the first advertising technology company integrated with OpenAI's advertising pilot inside ChatGPT Free and Go versions in the United States. This brings 17,000 advertisers and over $4 billion in annual media spend into conversational AI discovery surfaces. The standout data point: users referred from LLM platforms convert at roughly 1.5x the rate of other referral channels, based on Criteo's analysis of 500 U.S. retailers in February 2026.

Why This Matters: Conversational AI is officially an advertising channel. Ads are clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from organic answers, but the high-intent nature of conversational discovery is creating new opportunities for brands to reach consumers at the moment of decision.

✅ Action Item: Start thinking about your brand's conversational AI strategy. If users are increasingly asking ChatGPT for product recommendations instead of Google, your brand needs to show up in both environments.

Google will unveil Gemini AI integration into Google Marketing Platform at its March 23 Newfront event. This represents Google's deepest AI integration into its MarTech stack yet, targeting programmatic advertisers with AI-enhanced biddable tools and campaign optimization. Details are still sparse, but this could fundamentally change how programmatic campaigns are optimized and executed.

Why This Matters: If you run programmatic campaigns, mark March 23 on your calendar. Agencies that can quickly adapt to AI-assisted campaign management will likely gain a meaningful edge.

Google is widening the rollout of Gemini inside Chrome, bringing the built-in assistant to Canada, New Zealand, and India with support for 50+ languages. Rather than treating AI as a separate product, Google is embedding it directly into the browser — putting an AI assistant in front of hundreds of millions of users without requiring them to adopt a new app.

Why This Matters: Browser-level AI changes how consumers interact with content, search, and ads. This accelerates the zero-click trend where users get answers without visiting websites.

Category: AI Operating System / Agentic AI Platform Website: perplexity.ai

What It Is: A cloud-based AI system that orchestrates 20 frontier AI models into a single digital worker capable of understanding goals, delegating tasks to sub-agents, and executing complex multi-step workflows autonomously.

What You Can Do With It:

What Makes It Noteworthy: Unlike traditional AI assistants that respond to individual prompts, Perplexity Computer creates and executes entire workflows that can run for hours or months. The Personal Computer extension takes this further by running continuously on a dedicated Mac mini with access to your local files.

Pricing: Perplexity Max subscription at $200/month (Personal Computer currently waitlist-only, Mac-only at launch)

Best For: Agencies managing multiple client accounts, solopreneurs handling everything themselves, and marketing teams drowning in repetitive research and reporting tasks.

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Category: AI Visibility / Generative Engine Optimization

Why it's interesting: As zero-click search expands across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Meta AI, getting your brand cited by AI engines is becoming as important as ranking on page one of Google. This tool addresses that emerging need head-on.

Category: Sales Automation / CRM

Why it's interesting: For agencies and marketing teams running client calls all day, the post-meeting CRM update is a notorious time sink. Having an AI handle that automatically could save hours every week.

Category: E-Commerce / AI Store Builder

Why it's interesting: For marketers testing product ideas, running pop-up campaigns, or launching client micro-stores, the ability to go from concept to live storefront in minutes is genuinely compelling at this price point.

Category: Business Automation / AI Agents

Why it's interesting: This represents the broader trend of AI agents you can trust to run business tasks without constant supervision. The mobile launch makes it accessible on-the-go, which matters for busy marketers managing campaigns from everywhere.

Category: Marketing Data & Analytics

Why it's interesting: The Data API becoming available across all pricing tiers is a big deal for marketing teams building AI-driven reporting and automation workflows. Previously, this was an enterprise-only feature.

With zero-click search now spanning ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Bing, and Meta AI, your content strategy needs a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) layer. Here's how to start:

Step 1: Audit Your AI Visibility Search for your brand, products, and key service categories across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. Document where you appear, where competitors appear, and where you're absent.

Step 2: Structure Content for Extraction AI engines prefer content that's clearly structured with descriptive headings, step-by-step explanations, and factual specificity. Think about how your content reads when stripped of all design — does the text alone answer the question comprehensively?

Step 3: Build Authoritative Source Signals AI models tend to cite content from sources they perceive as authoritative. Prioritize getting mentioned in industry publications, maintaining an active presence on LinkedIn (which has become one of the most-cited domains for professional queries in AI search), and publishing original research or data.

Step 4: Monitor and Iterate Use tools like Semrush's Enterprise AIO or Skillaeo to track how your brand appears across AI platforms. Treat AI visibility like you treat SEO — it requires ongoing monitoring and optimization.

📊 Success Metric: Track the number of AI-generated answers that mention or cite your brand across at least three major AI platforms. Set a baseline this week and measure monthly growth.

That's a wrap for today's edition! This was a packed one — between Perplexity's always-on AI worker, Claude's cross-app intelligence, and ChatGPT officially becoming an ad platform, we're watching the AI marketing landscape transform in real time.

The marketers who win in 2026 are the ones who stay informed and take action. You're doing the first part by reading this — now pick one insight from today's newsletter and implement it this week.

Until next time,

Aleric & Greg

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