Skype has just announced that they will provide occasional advertising to their subscribers.
Ads will be targeted only in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany at first. This would bring more revenue in preparation for a IPO (Initial Public Offering).
Skype says it has now 663 million subscribers and 8.8 million paid subscribers. Skype users made 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls during 2010, and in the fourth quarter, video calls accounted for approximately 42 percent of all Skype-to-Skype minutes. Furthermore, users sent more than 176 million text messages via Skype.
Revenues grew to $860 million for the year ended Dec. 31, up from $719 million in 2009 (combining the 2009 results of Skype pre-spinoff from eBay and post-spinoff). The company is still not making profit: it had a net loss of $6.9 million.
According to Skype's management their is a risk: "our users may respond negatively to receiving advertisements through their Skype software client, which could negatively and materially affect user engagement, our Skype brand and our results of operations.”
Skype admits that negative publicity around the temporary shut down of its network for a day (last year), might hurt its ability to launch a product targeting businesses: “As we increasingly introduce products particularly targeted at enterprise customers, for whom system stability is a critical factor, any system failures could have a significant impact on our ability to attract or maintain our relationships with enterprise customers.”
Source: http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/20110307/skype-updates-its-pre-ipo-numbers-plans-to-sell-display-ads/
Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
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