Microsoft has started talking to advertising agencies about how it plans to capitalize on its new Bing search engine, powered by generative artificial intelligence, as the tech company seeks to challenge Google’s dominance.
At a meeting with a major advertising agency this week, Microsoft showed off a demo of the new Bing and said it plans to allow paid links in search results responses, an advertising executive said. spoke about the private meeting on condition of anonymity.
Generative AI, which can provide original answers to open-ended questions or requests using human voices, has been captivating the world lately. Last week, Microsoft and Google announced new generative AI chatbots a day apart. These bots, which are not yet widely used by users, will be able to synthesize material from the Internet for complex searches.
Early search results and conversations with Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s chatbot called Bard showed they could be unpredictable. Alphabet lost $100 billion in market value the day it released a promotional video for Bard that showed the chatbot was relaying inaccurate information.
Microsoft expects the more humane responses from the AI chatbot Bing to generate more users for its search function and thus more advertisers. Ads served by the Bing chatbot could also benefit from greater on-page visibility than traditional search ads.
Microsoft is already testing ads in its first version of the Bing chatbot, which is available to a limited number of users.
The company said it takes traditional search ads, where brands pay to have their websites or products appear in search results for keywords related to their business, and inserts them into responses generated by search engine chatbot Bing , said the advertising manager.
Microsoft is also planning another ad format within the chatbot, aimed at advertisers in certain industries. For example, if a user asks the new artificial intelligence-powered Bing “what are the best hotels in Mexico,” hotel ads could appear, according to the advertising manager.
Integrating ads with the Bing chatbot, which can be expanded to fill the top of the search page, could help prevent ads from being pushed further down the page below the chatbot.
Omnicom, a major advertising group that works with brands like AT&T and Unilever, has told customers that search ads could generate less revenue in the short term if chatbots occupy the top of search pages without inserting ads, according to a report sent to customers recently Week.
The new Bing, with millions of people waiting to access it, represents a potentially lucrative opportunity for Microsoft. The company said in a presentation to investors and the press last week that with every percentage point of market share it earns in the search Advertising market gains, could generate $2 billion in additional advertising revenue.
Hello everyone! There were a few questions about our waiting list to try the new Bing, so here’s a reminder of the process:
We are currently in limited preview so we can test, learn and improve. People were slowly being removed from the waiting list on a daily basis.
If you are on the waiting list, https://t.co/06PcyYE6gw pic.twitter.com/Lf3XkuZX2i
— Yusuf Mehdi (@yusuf_i_mehdi) February 15, 2023
Microsoft’s Edge web browser, which uses the Bing search engine, has less than 5% market share worldwide, according to an estimate by web analytics firm StatCounter.
Michael Cohen, executive vice president of media agency Horizon Media, who received a Bing demonstration at a separate meeting with Microsoft officials, said the company said the links at the bottom of Bing’s answer searches, generated by Bing’s AI, Places for advertising could be .
“They appear to be planning on starting paid in-app ads right away,” Cohen said, adding that Microsoft said more information about the strategy could come in early March.
When a reporter asked the new AI-powered Bing about the price of car air filters this week, Bing ran ads for filters being sold by auto parts website Parts Geek.
Parts Geek didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether it knew its ads were appearing on the new Bing chatbot.
Asked about Parts Geek’s announcements, Microsoft said that the potential of new AI technology in advertising is just being explored and that it intends to work with its partners and the advertising industry.
Despite early testing, Microsoft hasn’t provided a timeline for when brands can buy ads directly in the chatbot, Cohen and the advertising executive said.
In the long term, conversational AI is likely to become the dominant way for consumers to search the web, Omnicom said in its letter to customers.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that the announcements (from Microsoft and Google) signal the biggest shift in search in 20 years,” Omnicom said.
Source: microsoft
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