Skype announces the launch of Skype advertising

Skype has announced the launch of advertising in Skype which will appear in the Home tab in Skype starting this week. The Skype experience will be the company's first priority it is said and which is why it took the team at Skype a lot of time working through and testing what kind of advertising would work best in the Skype environment.

The test ads were out in Rdio since the last month or two. Now Skype will be rolling out ads on a wider basis, as it expects to continue to test and learn a lot more, and make any necessary adjustments along the way. Skype will be working with some great advertisers, including Groupon, Universal Pictures, and Visa. Ads will appear in the US, UK and Germany and advertising sales for Skype are initially focused in those markets. Users may only see ads occasionally. Skype's initial plan is to show an ad from one brand per day in each of the markets where advertising is being sold.

The ads will appear in the Home tab in Skype for Windows, and gradually Skype may experiment with ads in other areas as well.The ads will not interrupt with the user's Skype experience. "No annoying pop-up ads or flashy banner ads in middle of conversations," Skype says. Skype might use non-personally identifiable demographic data (e.g. location, gender and age) to target ads, which helps ensure that the user only sees relevant ads. Moreover users can opt out of allowing Skype to share this non-personally identifiable demographic data with advertisers from the Privacy tab in Tools †¸ Options.