Andy Sims of Skype shed some light on its new partnership with European Directories in which European Directories sells advertisers in its seven European countries a subscriptions package to deliver calls to that advertiser. Anywhere the advertiser’s phone number shows up on the Web it will be highlighted in blue and will indicate that by clicking on the blue box that the Skype user they can make a free call to the business. Businesses that are not partaking in the Skype ad program will continue to be highlighted in gray.

While currently Skype offers a subscription model to advertisers through its reseller, it is planning on offering a second tier of pricing targeted at high-volume, high-value accounts in which they will be charged on a cost-per-click basis. Since October 2009 when the partnership was announced, Sims said there has been a nice lift in call volumes for this product, which he characterizes as a quick sale to advertisers.

Sims, who joined Skype about a year ago to develop advertising opportunities for the company, noted that Skype has roughly a half billion users who made up about 8 percent of international call minutes last year.

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