If something is free, the product is you. This is the best phrase with which to define “free” services on the Internet, especially if we refer to those whose business model is based on advertising: see Google. Of course, Bing won’t be able to escape the ad market either.
After verifying how the product has been able to mobilize more than a million users in 48 hours, the time has come to make it profitable. The way, how could it be otherwise, will be through advertising. It is not really anything new, since that is what the figures that Satya Nadella taught during his presentation were based on.
The first step of the new Bing: paid links
According to Reuters, Microsoft met with major marketing agencies to show them the power of the new GPT-4-based Bing. The first step in the company’s plan to monetize the service would go through the introduction of paid links in chat responses with artificial intelligence.
The advertising business will be key in the monetization of the service, just as it is the central point of Google’s strategy with its search engine. Such is the influence that Satya Nadella indicated that, for each percentage point of market share gained, those from Redmond would enter two billion dollars more per year.
If the new AI-powered Bing manages to grab enough market share, Google would be in serious trouble. Virtually all of the Alphabet subsidiary’s revenue comes from the advertising market and Microsoft would be attacking its main waterline.
The next step, after the paid links, would be display ads related to the query made to the AI-based chat. In fact, it was Michael Cohen, executive vice president of Horizon Media, who confirmed that they “seem determined to start integrating paid ads” in the space below the responses.