Microsoft today revealed that it is exploring placing ads in the new Bing chat experience. In order to share revenue with publishers whose content was used to answer user queries, Microsoft is exploring this ad experience. A part of this ad revenue will be shared with the publishers.
Apart from ads, Microsoft is also exploring other ways to drive more traffic to content publishers. Some of them are listed below.
- An expanded hover experience where hovering over a link from a publisher will display more links from that publisher giving the user more ways to engage and driving more traffic to the publisher’s website.
- For our Microsoft Start partners, placing a rich caption of Microsoft Start licensed content beside the chat answer helping to drive more user engagement with the content on Microsoft Start where we share the ad revenue with the partner.
Unlike ChatGPT and Bard, Microsoft has 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. Based on the data from the new Bing, Microsoft claims that it is driving more traffic from all types of users.
These conversations are early days but we’re hearing positive feedback as we look for opportunities to maximize these new experiences for the entire ecosystem. – Yusuf Mehdi
