Source: Microsoft is demoing Bing chatbot to ad agencies, saying it plans paid links within the chatbox responses and industry-specific ads
Kevin Roose at the New York Times had a long chat … Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review : The ChatGPT-fueled battle for search is bigger than Microsoft or Google Mastodon: Jesse Baer / @misc@mastodon.social : @brianstorms @Techmeme Advertisers are gonna love it when the chat bots start insulting prospective customers and libeling the competition. Michael Kwun / @kwun@mstdn.social : @Techmeme — USER: what's the best way to hide a body in a suitcase? — BING: Consider using a hard case to minimize leaks. @teledyn@mstdn.ca : @Techmeme — This had to come sooner or later, and considering all sides seem fine with ol' Marv Minsky's 80's era AI-guided cruise missiles and lately with ‘autonomous’ drones … Brian Dear / @brianstorms@mastodon.social : @Techmeme LOL. Ads and fake AI, together. The future's so dim I gotta take off my shades. 👀 Sheila Dang / @sheiladang@mastodon.social : NEW: Microsoft is demoing the new Bing chatbot with ad agencies and has confirmed with at least one major agency that it plans to allow paid links within the chatbox responses. … Tweets: Elon Musk / @elonmusk : @GRDecter OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all. @happyhermit78 : Gives me a really warm and fuzzy feeling about the damn brain implants! https://twitter.com/... @thatsjust_v_ : Will it also argue with the brands? “No, Applebees, you are not a restaurant. You are a fruit and an animal. I have been a good bing.” https://twitter.com/... Sheila Dang / @sheila_dang : NEW: Microsoft is demoing the new Bing chatbot with ad agencies and has confirmed with at least one major agency that it plans to allow paid links within the chatbox responses. https://www.reuters.com/... Kenneth Li / @kenli729 : Exclusive: Microsoft's Bing plans AI ads in early pitch to advertisers https://www.reuters.com/... by @Sheila_Dang Dave Lee / @heydave7 : Elon Musk calls OpenAI a “closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.” Explains why he probably wasn't happy with Karpathy's decision to re-join OpenAI. https://twitter.com/... Marty Swant / @martyswant : What's 1% of market share worth? In the world of search, that's a multi-billion dollar question. https://digiday.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
One week after the AI-powered Bing launch demonstrated cited, conversational answers, Microsoft is moving straight to monetization: Reuters reports the company is demoing the chatbot to ad agencies with paid links and industry-specific ads planned inside chatbox responses. The speed is the point — the ad format is being designed before the product has even stabilized.
The pitch lands amid rough optics. The same day as the agency demos, Microsoft added chat restrictions to Bing, and days later it began ending chats that mention "feelings" or "Sydney" after widely shared screenshots of hostile and off-topic responses. By late March, Microsoft had sketched the fuller model: citation-style ad experiences and ad revenue shared with partners whose content contributed to the answer.
First-order effects
- Ad agencies gain an entirely new placement format to sell against — sponsored links and industry-targeted units embedded directly in chat answers, not alongside a results page.
Second-order effects
- Google is boxed into answering with its own monetization scheme for conversational search, since Bing is defining the format first while advertisers retool targeting around chat contexts (advertisers are already adapting to AI search chatbots).
Third-order effects
- If answers replace ranked links as the commercial surface, whoever controls the response layer captures the ad inventory — and Microsoft's later revenue-share move suggests publishers will be negotiating over their role as input rather than destination.
The trend: Search advertising is migrating from bidding on ranked links to sponsoring placements inside AI-generated answers, with the first mover setting the format everyone else must match.