Microsoft cleans up Copilot ad experience to court brands to the AI chatbot

Microsoft is freshening its ad experience on its Copilot AI platform as part of a larger effort to attract more brands to the chatbot’s advertising ecosystem. It also rolled out new tools to measure campaign performance. When serving ads, Copilot will now consider the entirety of the user’s session, as opposed to only the last prompt, as a way to improve their relevance. The bot will also provide a short summary of how it decided to serve these ads, which is meant to help introduce the message from advertisers while making the ad interaction more natural for users. The look of the ad placement is getting a makeover, too, now appearing with less distracting information such as annotations and extensions. This block will follow directly after the new summary feature in any given session. Microsoft’s cleaner advertising experience comes amid a wider redesign of Copilot unveiled this week. The platform’s user experience has been overhauled to resemble a more inviting destination, with warmer colors and a homepage personalized to query history. A new voice capability allows users to hold conversations with the bot, while a new vision capability enables the bot to see what is on a user’s screen. Meanwhile, other tech giants are conducting their own efforts to win over chatbot users. Google last month launched single-purpose models in Gemini meant to provide even more focused assistance. And Meta rolled out a suite of new Meta AI features, including celebrity-voiced personas, at its Connect conference last week. As the user experience improves in various platforms, brands will find more reason to show up, said Mo Allibhai, senior analyst at Forrester. “Anything that encourages better ads and improves how those ads are surfaced is sorely needed,” Allibhai said. Advertising within chatbot sessions has emerged as an opportunity for brands, especially given these platforms are attracting users. OpenAI recently stated that ChatGPT is seeing upwards of 200 million users per week, while Meta AI has over 185 million weekly users. Still, deploying ads directly to these users is an unproven format and few brands have launched such efforts. Microsoft did not respond to a request for ad examples. In response to a general comment on the new redesign, a Microsoft Advertising spokesperson said: “Our goal is to make Copilot simpler, cleaner and more conversational and this extends to the ads people see.” Ad Age Emerging Tech Summit—everything you need to know Microsoft wants to expand the relationship between marketers and users of Copilot. In a blog post announcing the cleaner Copilot ad experience, the tech giant mentioned plans to offer placements that showcase products in an interactive manner and inform relevant audiences of brand promotions. Microsoft also wants brands to create their own bots with which users can interact for information such as product recommendations. With Copilot’s new voice capabilities, branded bots could help provide better customer service, Allibhai said, but they may not be scalable in the way that Microsoft hopes. “I struggle to think of a brand that could use this to replace something today,” Allibhai said. Microsoft also unveiled new Copilot tools to help advertisers measure the performance of their ad campaigns. A diagnostics feature becoming available later this month will help advertisers assess various aspects of their campaigns to ensure they are running smoothly. These assessments will be accessible via conversational chat inside Copilot. Another feature rolling out later this month will provide a snapshot of how a campaign has been performing over a designated period. These insights will also be available via conversational chat. Allibhai expects these tools will be well received by buy-side customers, but what’s equally important is that they also become available on the sell-side. As Microsoft expands its Copilot-powered advertising services, publishers may soon start to see this kind of functionality. “Microsoft will bring it,” Allibhai said. NextGen Marketing Summit Join us for a crash course on Gen Z, DTC marketing and the creator economy Register today

Microsoft cleans up Copilot ad experience to court brands to the AI chatbot

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