Microsoft has introduced plans for additional ads in its AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser, with a goal to drive more traffic to publisher sites — demonstrating that the company is finally getting serious about competing in search and search advertising.

Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft corporate vice president, wrote in a blog post published Wednesday that the company is collaborating with publishers on the future of search.

“We’re also exploring placing ads in the chat experience to share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response,” Mehdi wrote in the blog post.

There are more than 100 million daily active users of Bing.

Chat is helping to drive engagement, including more than 100 million chats, he wrote. Of the millions of users in Preview, one third are new to Bing creating net new opportunity for publishers. While early days, the numbers are encouraging, he wrote.

Driving more traffic to publishers from search is a top priority for Microsoft, he wrote. The plan is to measure success, in part, by the amount sent from the new Bing and Edge.

Another goal is to increase revenue for publishers by driving more traffic to them through features like chat and answers and by pioneering the future of advertising in these new media.

Microsoft will also collaborate with the industry to continue to foster a healthy ecosystem.

Citations within the chat already drive traffic to publisher sites, but Microsoft plans to implement more ways to link to additional sources. 

Microsoft executives have met with some partners to begin exploring ideas on how the company can continue to drive traffic and revenue.

Some ideas being explores include an expanded hover experience over a link from a publisher that will display more links from that publisher. Microsoft Start partners could have access to a rich caption of Microsoft Start licensed content beside the chat answer, helping to drive more user engagement with the content and share ad revenue with the partner.

Placing ads in the chat and share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response is another option. 

Microsoft introduced plans for additional ads in its AI-powered Bing engine and Edge browser to drive more traffic to publisher sites — showing the company is finally getting serious about competing with Google in organic and paid search advertising.