Microsoft may share the ad revenue it generates through the Bing Chat responses with some publishers it obtains that content from. Yusuf Mehdi from Microsoft wrote, "exploring placing ads in the chat experience to share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response."
While the ads in Bing Chat are not new, I've documented dozens of ad formats Bing Chat has implemented since it first launched Bing Chat. Yes, Bing had ads on Bing Chat since it first launched and you can see from my story from several weeks ago, many of those ad formats.
But what is new is that Microsoft said they are looking for ways to share the ad revenue directly with publishers. Yusuf Mehdi from Microsoft wrote:
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. We’re also exploring placing ads in the chat experience to share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response.
The Microsoft Start program is not new either, it is from 2021.
I do not know exactly how the ad revenue share will work but clearly Microsoft is looking at ways to help publishers earn revenue from Bing Chat, which is amazing!
"In addition to what we’ve already built into the preview experience, we are also exploring additional capabilities for publishers including our more than 7,500 Microsoft Start partner brands. We recently met with some of our 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," Yusuf Mehdi added.
I have not heard anything about the ad revenue share from any of my sources, so this must be something being done with a very limited number of publishers.
Just note, there is a lot of incorrect reporting (The Verge got it right) on this news around Bing Chat adding ads, that is not new. The new part seems to be that Microsoft may share revenues it earns from these ads in Bing Chat with publishers.
Here is one of the many ad formats I covered, but there are also in-line "ads" labels in my story from several weeks ago:
Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.
