Reuters reports that Microsoft has met with advertising agencies to unveil its plan to monetize Bing with ChatGPT by allowing paid links to be included in its answers.
Bing with ChatGPT has been all the rage since its unveiling, and has led many to believe that, for the first time, Microsoft holds the key to standing up to Google’s search engine. However, Redmond’s plans to monetize its implementation of the artificial intelligence chatbot may not be to your liking.
According to Reuters, Microsoft has met with advertising agencies to discuss how it plans to generate money thanks to Bing with ChatGPT. And its intention would be none other than to start including paid links with ads among the conversational bot’s responses. To such an extent that he has already shown a demo of how it works to one of the companies involved.
It is not yet known how advanced Bing’s monetization plan with ChatGPT is, nor when Microsoft intends to implement it openly. Those who had access to the information indicated that, according to Satya Nadella’s logic, including advertisements in the chatbot will help advertisers not to lose relevance.
Beyond the modality that Microsoft chooses to incorporate ads in Bing with ChatGPT, the measure also aims to respond to a growing concern among advertising agencies and the brands they represent. That if the artificial intelligence chatbot occupies the top of the search engine, traditional ads will become less effective – and generate less revenue – as they are pushed down the results page.
Bing with ChatGPT already has ‘undercover’ ads
While Microsoft’s plan is to introduce sponsored links on Bing with ChatGPT, it may already be including ads on the platform. Reuters mentions that, according to its sources, Redmond is taking cases of companies paying for traditional ads in its search engine, and inserting them in answers related to keywords linked to their respective businesses.
Microsoft’s plans appear to be very ambitious. However, they raise more doubts than certainties. First, because it is not known how invasive the presence of advertisements in OpenAI-powered chatbot responses could be. Second, because it is not clear in which cases ads will be shown and in which cases they will not. Third, because it calls into question the reliability of the answers that the artificial intelligence can generate. After all, will answers based on factual questions be prioritized, or will sponsor-paid results be given space over truly relevant content?
On top of this, Bing with ChatGPT is still far from perfect, or always providing accurate answers. In addition, in the last few hours its “temperamental nature” was exposed when question and answer sessions are too long. All issues that make you wonder if the platform is really ready to include paid links to ads.
If Microsoft moves forward with this, there will be one more element to resolve: that the public knows that they are being served ads in their answers. Because if the content is not only sponsored, but a disguised ad, users will hate it. And it won’t take long for them to let you know.