Cannes 2013 Video: Skype Growth Soars as Native Ad Offering Still in Development

ClickZ speaks with Lovina McMurchy, general manager of Skype Advertising, who discusses the “tremendous growth” of Skype since its acquisition by Microsoft in October 2011. According to McMurchy, more than 300 million people now use the online video calling service every month, with 8 billion hours of calls made each year.

“Microsoft is folding Skype into a lot of its other products so that it’s able to drive even more new users and more new use…. For example, we will soon bring together Skype with our enterprise product, Lync, and we believe that we will see a lot of continuing momentum as we do that work,” says McMurchy.

Concurrently, Skype is still actively working on its native advertising offering. In November 2012, the company announced plans to incorporate interactive display and video ads that will have the ability to turn calls into a more social and relevant branded experience, using Skype’s own interface.

While the initial plan was to begin rolling this out at the beginning of 2013, McMurchy says that the company has been focusing its efforts on its standard offering and making sure that it is up to scratch. Now that this has been completed, it will concentrate on its native offering.

“The native opportunity is a really exciting one. We are deeply interested and energized in it, and it has been the center of a lot of our conversations that we have been having with brands,” notes McMurchy.