David Pann, general manager for the search network at Microsoft, said his company is working with Facebook to improve the consumer experience of Facebook Graph Search, which is powered by Bing, before increasing its monetisation efforts.
Facebook is working hard to get users to do more non-people related searches because of the poor monetisation prospects around consumers searching for people they used to know, according to Pann.
He explained: "If you go to Facebook and you search for hotels in London you will see ads. The problem is how many people are going to Facebook to do that kind of search?
"First you have to educate the Facebook users that they have the richness and robustness of search engine built into Facebook and powered by Bing."
New Microsoft advertising products are being considered for integration into Facebook once consumers have a greater understanding of the capabilities of Bing.
Pann envisages people being able to click on the name of a hotel a friend messages in a status update, which will generate a search query that will serve ads for booking a room at the hotel.
Alongside the Facebook partnership, Microsoft is also seeking to build on its search partnership with Yahoo! and combine the functionality of its Bing and Skype brands.
Pann told Marketing he believes the Bing-Yahoo search alliance is "working" in response to speculation that Yahoo! was considering ending its partnership with Bing.
He said: "We believe we’ve created a strong alternative to Google and the collaboration between Yahoo and Microsoft has brought innovation products to dozens of countries across the globe with more countries to come and we believe we’ve been delivering greater performance to Yahoo over the last two years."
Pann also dismissed the suggestion that Yahoo was displeased with Bing because its revenue per search had dropped since it decided to power its searches using Bing.
Revenue per search has grown double digits across the Yahoo-Bing network year-on-year, according to Pann.
Microsoft is also gearing up to launch a new click to call function into its Bing ads that will allow people to use a mobile device to click on the ad and initiate a Skype call.
The feature is due to be launched in three months in the UK and Microsoft is also considering integrating video calls to allow brands to offer customer support via search results.
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