Now, I enjoy ads (?) as much as the next person. But Skype’s latest plan – to show ads on screen during phone calls – feels a little desperate.
The idea is this: for people using Skype for free, a “relevant” ad will appear during a call. Skype is really, really hoping that people will talk about it and has even gone so far as to call these things “Conversation Ads”.
Will it work? Maybe. There are a lot of people who may be interested enough in Skype (i.e., free or very cheap voice calls) that they’ll deal with the ads or accept them as the price. And it really fits in with the working model of Facebook and Twitter: give stuff away and cram it with ads.
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Posted in Consumer Commentary, Get Off My Lawn