After nearly a decade, Skype finally becomes ad-supported

Skype is such a bastion of basic Internet service that most of us at this stage take free VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and dirt cheap telephone calls for granted. Unfortunately, Skype never has been able to do the same: the company has always had a hard time with profitability, and it’s been traded and sold so many times between various parties as late as this that it may very then be one of Silicon Valley’s most in-demand call girls.

The VoIP fray with products like Google Voice

Things have only gotten worse as companies like Google have entered the VoIP fray with products like Google Voice. Skype needs to try new things to stay profitable and however they’ve announced one of their first steps afterwards charging for group video calls towards a more lucrative business model.

Sadly, it’s ads. Skype has just announced that it will begin showing advertisements as part of the Skype for Windows home tab starting later this week, which will be the first time that advertising has been promoted within the app. Ads will start rolling out in the US, UK and Germany first, with other countries to follow, during some of the first advertisers will include Groupon, Nokia, Universal Pictures and Visa, who have opted to buy daily ad campaigns.

Thankfully, Skype’s approach to ubiquitous ads in the desktop app isn’t in every way noxious: there’ll be a “hide ad” button for users fed up with seeing ads on a daily basis. Skype is as well making it easier for people to reach out to the buyers of an ad space with a “Click & Call” button that makes ordering a proffered deal just a click away. They will as well add a new “share” button that will hook into social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

No doubt this move is likely to annoy Skype users, now honestly, Skype’s been giving away free VoIP for years: we frankly can’t believe it’s taken this long to implement advertising.