Skype for Windows has started displaying ads from Universal, Visa and Groupon and other business partners of Skype. This act on the part of Skype is perhaps being done to increase the revenues of the company after last year the company filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
The ads are currently being shown on the home tab of the famous audio, video as well as text-based chat software. This is by far the first time that Skype has jumped into the ad serving business which is now being expected to spread to the other parts of the PC calling company.
Skype software allows its users to make free or very less expensive long-distance calls taking benefit of the VoIP technology. It also allows two or more users of the software to hold video chat sessions from their computers to other computers or mobile phones or landlines.
Currently Skype serves almost 29 million users at the same time, who remain online and use the above mentioned services offered by Skype. Also, according to the figures from the company, there are 663 million people all over the world who have downloaded Skype software either on their PCs or on their mobile phones and use it off and on for connecting with others.
The wide usage of the Skype client automatically makes it a mighty potential advertising platform but until recently, the company has been avoiding from ruining the user experience by showing third party ads through the software.
Skype recently filed for an IPO in August 2010 and since then it has changed its marketing approach. It has silently been relaying ads from one of its partners Rdio in the last 2 months and is now preparing for a roll-out on a bigger scale by which it will be showing Ads from Visa on the home tab of the Skype client.
The company has however promised about not using banner ads or pop-up ads or ruining the user experience by showing ads in individual chat screens.