Microsoft wants to stick adverts in Bing chat responses So much for a good thing: Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi said Redmond is considering selling ad space in answers provided by the new Bing chatbot. Mehdi says as much in a blog post published yesterday in which he shares that, while it's still in the discussion phase with its partner brands, Microsoft is …
AI: I'm sorry, I am not fully understanding your requirements. Do you want to crap <constipation advert> hot <gee that's hot advert> potatoes <potato advert> or do you want something hard <blue pill advert> to collapse? Both can be on the cards <casino advert> with the right medication from <advert>.
Stick <stick advert> it <IT vendor advert>.
"Microsoft is mulling over a few different approaches: An expanded mouse-hover popup that displays additional links from a publisher alongside the link that's actually relevant to results is one possibility"
Cool. Even better: How about a link that follows the cursor around so the user can't *not* click on it? Because the user really does want to click on it, they just don't know that yet.
"Positive feedback" from the "partners" they've convinced stand to make lots of money from it? I'll bet.
As far as the actual end users having this crap shoved in their faces go, I suspect the only "positive feedback" would be "I'm positive that I don't want anything to do with this obnoxious shite".
I dont understand why anyone pays for advertising ?
Surely the shear number of ads on all platforms and means basically means the payback for any possible sales must be very very small, so why bother ?
If users see 100s or 1000s of ads per day, its basically not economically possible for them to buy more than 10 items, they simply would not have the money and thats for ones who take the bait.
Presumably, there must be supporting evidence for advertising being cost-effective in the context of specific publications on paper or online. For instance, vendors of ridiculously priced watches and super-yachts might target titles aimed towards wealthy people obsessed with their positions in the lifestyle pecking order, whereas soap flakes are blasted among viewers of low-end TV programmes. But, can there be evidence for value from indiscriminate scatter-gun approaches? Perhaps, for specific categories of goods, hardly for all?
Marketing has become a huge, self-sustaining industry. It's more a curse on humanity than a useful service for facilitating trade. Advertising costs money. It is paid for by people buying goods. Indiscriminate expenditure on advertising is merely another unquestioned tax on customers, much as huge rental costs of high-street purveyors of goods and services. Marketing, perhaps once a useful service to sellers and buyers, now has characteristics of yet another parasitic entity within commerce. I suspect companies to a large extent use advertising of poor discriminatory qualities because marketeers tell them it works and, anyway, competitors do it. For instance, the TV 'jingle', an expensive nonsense, conveys no useful information about products and concerns the abstraction known as 'brand awareness'. Firms will fill Microsoft's coffers because each advertisement is cheap in absolute terms, and users of the service cannot be bothered with 'evidence based' trading.
Steadily, Microsoft is becoming a marketing entity which happens to control a popular computer operating system. Convergence with Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and all other things tacky.
I put it too you that online advertising is the biggest con in retailing....
Is there any proof that ads help, does anyone have any proof how companies survive without online ads ?
Ive asked family friends and more and nobody i know clicks and buys from an online ad. I have never bought a single thing, and the only ad clicks i make which are rare are mistakes and never result in a buy.
For some strange i reason at one stage i got a lot of car ads, to buy a new car, dont know why but guess what i didnt buy any of those cars, so that was a glorious con.
Unfortunately (for someone who, like yourself, does not enjoy seeing adverts everywhere) it *does* work for some products/companies, and can all be tracked with various codes and cookies. It's very possible to see that the $100 (or whatver) you paid resulted in X impressions where your ad was shown, which lead to Y people going to your website, and Z purchases on the back of those impressions. So you know what extra sales your ad money drove, and if it's more or less than the profit margin on those sales; and you know what your normal sales were direct from the webstie without the ads the previous months, etc. It's crappy, but it works, because some people do buy things after seeing and then clicking on adverts.
If you don't like it, just don't click on the adverts. Ironically, if everyone who hates adverts - and wasn't going to ever click on them - who blocks the adverts from being shown at all then the impression -> sales rate increases, giving advertising better returns... which leads to more advertising.
'considering' - well, that's a lie of course. But then, why anyone should be surprised, it's been always meant to be a new, hopefully big, bigger BIGGEST revenue stream. Obviously it's going to evolve to be incorporated into 'helpful replies'. Think clippy 3.0 style, of a goode olde 2nd hand car salesman: It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop.
the blather about curated news. Whatever that BS might be. Whenever I am forced to use an unsecured browser the utterly irrelevant twaddle that pollutes the screen is irritating. Who the Niflelheim would want to know what some nonentity droid on twatter of worse, MSN , thinks about armadillo poo or something even more odious like some foreign failed states politicians. Needless to say, the only bing I hear or use is a toaster signaling food is ready for bacon. The manglement groups really do despise we proles.
Time to abolish M$, Google et al as dangerous to sanity and disassemble Zuck during an investigation into artificial "lifeforms".
As it is, sneakernet might be the new Next Big Thing because its harder for the b\*st\*s to sneak adds in without serious physical proximity damage in case of nefarious intent.
unfortunately, you're a minority. My observation from yesterday: a 16 year old opens a video clip (on youtube, what else), to show it to me. Then she apologises to me for me having to wait about... 3 secs, 'because advert'. I say 'why don't you use an adblock browser (yes, it's shit, but it cuts mout most of the youtube crap). She starts BROWSING for that browser, what else, 2 sec later: oh, no, don't worry, I have no more space on my iphone to install it anyway.
I didn't even go through the WTF session with her about this, because, what's the point? Instead of sorting out this fucking ad annoyance once and for all, she's prepared to put up with (...) ads every (...) time she opens youtube. So yeah, advertising does work.
I had this appear earlier on in the week.
First thing I tried in response to the "Can I help you?" message was to ask it "How do I remove Bing from Skype".
That didn't work, as it wanted me to accept T&C's of use before it would reply.
Right-click, delete on the bot in the contacts list seems to have sorted it (Mac version).
Same here. I woke in the morning to a flurry of skype message notifications from clippy v2.0. What worries me is you can block the messages, but can't stop the thing.
Overall it seems to be utterly useless. One of it's suggested things it could help me with is to 'find a vegan restaraunt in Cambridge'
Firstly I don't live in the UK.
Secondly all my friends know that if I am seen in a vegan restaraunt I am being held hostage...
Bing chatbox: "I've noticed you have been asking questions about an irregular heartbeat. Why not call your doctor today and ask about Expensiveall, a new drug from Astra-Zenica. With Expensiveall, you can control your irregular heartbeats with just one pill a day! Side effects include poverty, worry over bills, death, explosive diarrhea, irregular heartbeat, and zombie toes. These are not all the possible side effects. Tell your doctor about all medications you are taking. Take back your life with Expensiveall!"
Me: "How do I get to Lutton?"
Bing chatbox: "From your current address, take highway 25 north then highway 273 east. Along the way, why not stop in at the McDonald's just along your route and try the new limited-edition Big Mac with a new special sauce."
And I am sure I could go on. Your chat history will be tied to personal information, and then Microsoft will find ways to personalize the ads in a creepy way. Simple questions will be ways to interject ads. I think I will permanently ignore all this AI chat.
That is what this amounts to: pay enough and the "AI" will make sure your products and services are served up in the answers.
As for the numbers: if I were Microsoft, I'd wonder about the sudden spike and how much of it is driven by bots and competitors finding out how not to do it.
Two months to go from revolutionary AI to the same advertising crap of the last three decades. Singularity is definitely near.
Cherry on top is how Microsoft gushes about Windows "maximizing your workflow". Because ads in the start menu and the Excel banner and Bingbot really make my working and browsing smoother.
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