• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 27, 2017

Microsoft began to further outline the ways in which Bing integrates artificial intelligence, advancements in conversational search, integration of Bing Ads and LinkedIn graphs, and support for businesses through Microsoft Cognitive Services.

While Microsoft mentioned the integration of data between Bing Ads into LinkedIn, this week executives spent more time detailing the progress being made through Chat Bot Extension on Bing and advancements in the search engine's technology into Azure for businesses.

Later this year, Microsoft will begin a pilot program for Chat Bot Extensions on Bing to offer brands real-time interactions with consumers. Brands want direct interaction with consumers through conversations. This feature gives them the ability to answer questions directly from the search query.

Bing also expanded on its In-Market Audiences targeting feature, which uses AI, giving marketers access to curated lists of users who are ready to make a purchase. Rob Wilk, vice president of North American search sales at Microsoft, in a blog post explains that through In-Market Audiences, customers on average see up to 28% greater click-through rates and up to 48% better conversion rates.

Artificial intelligence is powering new opportunities for Bing Ads to integrate into other Microsoft products. Microsoft this week also pointed to one important update through Azure to Microsoft Cognitive Services, a collection of intelligent APIs that allow developers to add AI capabilities to their applications.

The October release of Bing Custom Search -- a customized search experience for a section of the Web -- and Bing Search v7, will provide more relevant results using Bing Web, news, video, image search, as well as a new version of autosuggest and spellcheck.

Microsoft also launched the private preview of Bing for Business, as well as a few new tools for developers, at its Ignite enterprise conference in Orlando, Florida.

The idea integrates data from the Microsoft Graph consisting of in-house social, documents, email and other data to provide personalized search results on Bing. When a colleague has a very common name, Bing will prioritize search results about the person over those with the same name.