Confirmed, Microsoft Brings More Ads In Bing Chat

Illustration of advertisements in Bing chatbot (photo: Blog Bing)

JAKARTA - In recent days, many users have reported that they saw an advertisement in the Bing chatbot, which was empowered by the GPT-4.

According to a screenshot uploaded on Twitter by users with username @deberghya_das, Bing pinned a relevant ad link in response to the user's actual question.

The ad doesn't seem to have appeared for most people, but it will most likely appear more frequently and to more users in the near future.

Bing Chat now has Ads!It's going to be fascinating to see how the unit economics of Ads in language models will unfold and affect search advertising.1/3 pic.twitter.com/o5YjRjikOP

— Deedy (@debarghya_das) March 29, 2023

Regarding the report, Microsoft Corporate VP for Search and Devices, Yusuf Mahdi confirmed that the company is currently exploring advertising placement in the Bing chat experience.

"Recently we met with some of our partners to start exploring ideas and getting feedback on how we can continue to distribute content in a meaningful way in traffic and income for our partners," Mehdi wrote in Bing's blog.

So, for Microsoft Start partners, Bing will put text from Microsoft Start's licensed content alongside chat answers. This is intended so that Microsoft can share its partner's ad revenue.

"We are also exploring advertising placements in chat experiences to share advertising revenue with partners whose content contributes to chat responses," he added.

Not only that, Microsoft also said that they had implemented a unique way to direct traffic to publishers including excerpts in the content of chat answers linked to sources as well as quotes under chat results to "more study" with links to additional sources.

However, Mahdi admitted that this is still an early stage, Microsoft will still hear feedback from users to maximize this new experience for the entire ecosystem in the future.