How will Skype target internal ads?
Skype’s been showing ads inside Skype 4.x. The orange backgrounds are commercial. They show promotional offers ("get 15% off") and explain value propositions ("Save money on…"). Some ads show tips and tricks to get more from your Skype experience or avoid problems. Now we’re seeing the first public service announcements. "Peace One Day: What will you do to make peace on 21st September? Visit www.peaceday.org." Instead of Skype art it features the Peace One Day logo. Peace One Day is a third-party message. It’s served in English so Skype’s ad server apparently filters or ads are served in all Skype languages, the flavor selected by each user’s language preference. What else can Skype use to target ad placement? They can serve locality (profile, IP address, mobile GPS). They can mine your shallow Skype profile for gender (women often omit this or lie) or keywords. Would it bother you if Skype mined your chat text to automatically place commercial ads? Google does this. Is the Skype experience different than webmail? How would you feel if Skype analyzed your buddy list and contact history? "Five of your friends dialed this ad." Relevance in advertising is good for users, right? Perhaps there’s a future in shared ads, ads seen by all the parties in a chat at the same time. "Manchester United is playing a friendly next week. Tune in." Fodder for conversation. Trigger a shared conference call to a service: talk amongst yourselves while listening to a tune or an interview with a celebrity. Skype’s been careful in their in-client advertising. They don’t want to harm user experience or the Skype brand. Email screenshots of your in-Skype ads to tips@skypejournal.com. tags: skype, ad, ads, advertising, psa, promotion, adserver, advert, bannerCall me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.