Over the past few months, Skype has been testing click-to-call ads on the Web, partnering with local-business directories who pay for the calls. Tomorrow, Skype is set to announce the official roll-out of its click-to-call advertising service with European Directories, one of the largest local business directory services in Europe.
Part of Skype’s latest version for Windows (Skype 4.1) comes with a browser plug-in that lights up phone numbers on Web pages. Users can click on the numbers to automatically launch a Skype call, but they pay for the SkypeOut minutes. Skype is taking the same functionality and making those calls free to consumers by partnering with directory listing services who pay for them instead.
Initially, European Directories will pass along the calls for no additional charge to its business customers. Eventually, it hopes to demonstrate the value of the calls and charge for them on a click-per-call basis. As I explained back in April:
Click-to-call ads have been tried before, but this turns the actual phone number into an ad. Click it, and you call the business you were looking for, and the call is paid for by either the business or the Yellow Pages partner. The $32 billion Yellow Pages industry is quickly moving to the Web and Skype has the ability to light up any business phone number found on the Web.
Presumably, the Yellow Pages partners would only pay for numbers in their directories, so Skype would have to come up with a way to indicate which calls are free and which ones are not.
And that is exactly what it has done. Free calls, paid for by partners, are highlighted in blue when encountered on a Webpage, while regular SkypeOut calls are highlighted in gray.
Turning phone numbers found on the Web into ads could help Skype open up a significant new line of revenue. But already Skype is playing catch-up against younger rivals. Yext, one of this year’s TechCrunch50 crop which just raised $25 million in new funding, has been turning online directory listings into click-to-call leads for years.
Now, Yext is moving beyond simple click-to-call ads to pay-per-action ads based on what people actually say in the call and monitored by sophisticated speech-to-text software. Skype has “no plans to do anything based on what someone is saying on the call,” says Don Albert, Skype’s Vice President of Advertising. And it might not have to. If it can get just a small portion of its 480 million users worldwide to start clicking on those free calls, its advertising business will do just fine.
Of course, that is assuming it settles those pesky lawsuits with the Skype founders about its continued access to the basic technology that Skype runs on.
Turning business listings into paid ads is an awesome new monetization layer for Skype. One of the things I love about the way they’ve implemented it is a that there’s a great value add for both users (free call) and advertisers (more calls). Very cool.
Which makes it all the more confusing why EBay didn’t implement this on their site when they owned it among many other $$$ ideas that would have integrated the two systems for a synergetic benefit.
Jon @ WoodMarvels.com
I think this will be a great step for people to advertise online. However, I do see it as becoming a possible problem. There could be accidental click to the numbers. Sometime clicks could come from curious people not knowing anything about the situation. Also, pranksters on the internet can also be fooling around way too much with this. I can see it now… businesses getting very annoyed with all of the useless calls.
I wonder if this requires the user to have the Skype app installed.
I think this is great, we already use Skype to make calls to the Caribbean. Skype also recognize names in articles that you may have in you contacts.
skype is one of the most exciting technologies to come out in the last decade. And they should copy Yext’s business strategy. If successful, they could be the next Google!
” Yext, one of this year’s TechCrunch50 crop which just raised $25 million in new funding, has been turning online directory listings into click-to-call leads for years.”
I thought TC50 was for companies to LAUNCH. Between Penn and Teller piece of shit app and established companies, and pretty sure some very cool companies were left out.
Hopefully you were not one of those companies that were not chosen to presentm maybe next time or should I say, Yext time?
Obviously Yext opened the eyes of everyone for a new stream of revenue for technology that has been around forever in internet time. Let’s open up the possibilities a bit- if they open their platform for everyone to play and they are the new Yellow Pages or local search preference prior to Skype, Hmm?
Think this through- if you added a little foursquare with mayor’s signing up and promoting local search along with GoWalla rewards and a little pay for User Generated Content, everyone would turn into a local sales and promoter and check to see if every biz was signed up.
What if Skype could turn ever user into a signer of every biz they liked? Yext is nearly ready but a little VoIP integration with softswitch is just a click away.
Eric, they aren’t rolling out click to call ads, you have the Skype toolbar installed (it installs unless you tell it not too for Ffox and IE during Skype installation) there is a number recognition algorithm that displays the applet with click to call that you are seeing.
It will also search and recognize skype usernames and add the applet to them as well, with presence information if the person has enabled broadcasting of that information in the client.