Microsoft: Ads in Bing Chat as Microsoft explores revenue options – Times of India

Well, that was quick, wasn’t it? Usually when a service/app gets popular, companies tend to wait a little longer to brings ads to it. But Microsoft has taken the plunge and got ads in the Bing Chat, which is powered by ChatGPT. The reason? Microsoft says it wants to increase the revenue for publishers. In an official blog post, Microsoft said that the new Bing is helping to better address people’s search needs with new capabilities like chat, answers, and content creation. “These new experiences have caused questions about what this might mean for content publishers in terms of traffic,” said the company in the blog post.

Ads within the Bing Chat box

Be it any search engine, there is a need for monetisation and Bing — even with ChatGPT — is no different. So it comes as a little surprise to see Microsoft doing this. The only surprise perhaps is the timing of it as no one would have expected it to happen so soon. But Microsoft has laid down its reasons and how it will work.
“We want to drive more traffic to publishers in this new world of search. It is a top goal for us, and we measure success in part by how much traffic we are sending from the new Bing/Edge. Second, we want to increase revenue to publishers,” said Microsoft.
The company further explained how ads have been integrated within Bing Chat. “We have uniquely implemented ways to drive traffic to publishers including citations within the body of the chat answers that are linked to sources as well as citations below the chat results to “learn more” with links to additional sources,” explained Microsoft.
Microsoft said that it met with some of its partners to begin exploring ideas and to “get feedback on how we can continue to distribute content in a way that is meaningful in traffic and revenue for our partners.”
Users will further see ads within the chat box as Microsoft said that it is exploring placing ads in the chat experience to share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response.