Skype will stop including ads for the first time in years. Microsoft has surprisingly announced that it will remove all advertising that it had been showing on the platform to "ensure a more fluid, orderly and pleasant user experience," as indicated in the specifications of the new version 8.125.

This move means that those who use the application will no longer see ads in the main interface or the channels section, which shows news content from media aggregated by MSN in the US.

And it responds to complaints that have occurred since the technology giant began to include them in 2013 as part of its advertising monetization strategy for all its properties.

However, it will only be accessible for now to those who are part of Skype Insiders, the test program so that users who wish to can use functionalities that could later be expanded to all the others. There is no set deployment schedule for this.

Microsoft bought Skype in 2011, and the $8.5 billion it spent on the deal made it its most expensive purchase to date. It was until 2016, when the company committed more than $26 billion to acquire LinkedIn.

The tech giant does not break down its advertising business, so the loss of profits that this move will entail is uncertain.

In 2022, the company earned just over $12.2 billion from ads, and that figure barely reaches 2% of global investment in digital campaigns, compared to almost 30% for Google.

In addition, that route only contributed around 6% of the $198 billion that the company billed in that year.

In any case, Microsoft's involvement in advertising has been increasing over the years, as demonstrated by the purchase of Xandr in 2021 and the collaboration with Netflix to launch its ad-supported version thanks to it. In addition, its foray into generative artificial intelligence with Bing aims to challenge Google for some of the planning associated with search.

https://dircomfidencial.com/marketing-digital/microsoft-retira-la-publicidad-de-skype-20240801-1108/