Skype Identified Advertising as a Revenue Source

Skype will continue to earn advertising. The company now shows the Windows version of its VoIP client in ads. They are only in the U.S., Britain and Germany appear initially. Among the other advertisers include Groupon , Universal Pictures , Visa and Volkswagen .

"We believe that our advertising if it is done correctly, the development of great products will help," writes Doug Bewsher, Chief Marketing Officer of Skype, in a journal . The ads appeared only occasionally and not affect user experience. It was planned, one ad per brand to show only a day.

To advertise on users align and improve the relevance will use Skype anonymous information such as location, gender and age, Bewsher wrote. About the privacy settings in the Options menu can also share this data off to advertisers.
Other free instant-messaging applications fade in advertising. The ads are Skype's third pillar. So far, the company earned with charges for calls to landlines and mobile networks and premium services for businesses.

Last Friday, Skype has also released its latest user numbers. At year end the Company had 663 million registered users. Of these, according to Skype 145 million active users. 8.8 million Skype users pay for the service.

Further, the balance for fiscal year 2010 submitted to Skype. With sales of $ 859,800,000 (€ 614.5 million) earned the VoIP provider to 31 December 2010, a loss of 6.9 million dollars (4.9 million euros). Skype 2009, 718.9 million dollars, representing a net loss of $ 358,800,000 resulted. This includes even numbers are prior to the spin-off company of Ebay.