• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 6, 2025

Most consumers do not want to admit they like advertising or marketing, but they often find new products from brands that way, from brands or products they had never heard about. It almost seems like a necessary evil.

AI-powered search and advertising will help consumers find new brands, but for the most part it is not because the content is limited to what people have written about. And when only one journalist has written articles about a specific product, brand or service without reviews, the consumer cannot really tell whether that product works as it should.

Microsoft launched Copilot Search in Bing on Friday to offer AI-powered summaries with links to sources and conversational answers.

Jim Yu, founder of BrightEdge, told MediaPost that Microsoft found that people are make buying decisions faster with Copilot -- cutting the average time from 30 days to about 20 days.

"Every AI Search platform, engine or large language model (LLM) is in a race to capture user trust in their results and in the variety of experiences provided," he said. "In Microsoft’s case there is also a big gap in search engine marketer share," he added. "Google dominates with 92% share, and Bing has around 4%. It’s a big overhaul."

Copilot Search returns brief summaries from various websites. It aims to give users access to quick answers with clear source links. Like Google’s similar features, it offers a more conversational search experience. Each answer includes clickable links to original sources. The clear citations help support content creators and publishers.

The tool lets allows users to explore topics in depth. Clicking on related topics lets the user start over without getting lost in the content. This creates a natural search experience. While it has always been necessary to match people with products and services that fulfill their needs and desires, Copilot search will take the matching a bit further.

"For ad marketers it looks like Copilot Search will show products side-by side and this could make it competitive in a type of ‘Compare and Decide’ results," he said. "It will become important for marketers especially in industries like ecommerce and retail. It will be interesting to see how ads will perform in terms of clicks and clickthrough rates. Success will depend on relevancy."

Yu added that one big "unique selling proposition" that will push this is that it allows users to verify information. It is transparent in the way it shows sources and citation or links. Copilot provides summaries with clickable links to original sources -- something that all AI engines are trying to do in some way or another -- it’s all part of the battle for trust.

"Will it work?" he said. "it’s too early to tell, and as everyone in AI in search is finding, building trust with consumers takes time and patience. I also think we have seen this with Google. Integrating traditional and AI takes a lot of time and experimentation. As a result, he said, some users may have a good experience, and others may have a negative experience before anything stabilizes.

What makes it even more interesting, he said, this search product, Microsoft Copilot Search, is very similar to ChatGPT search. The Catch 22 is that Open AI is one of Microsoft's most important AI partners, but at the same time is a growing competitor.