I just read on the Google talkabout blog that Google and eBay signed a contract to let Google Adsense ads contain Skype callto-links in the future. Meaning that you’ll be able to call advertisers directly via Skype whenever you see an “call-enabled” ad. A pretty nice feature.
Question with such a new contract is: who’s the one to pay? I say, it’s neither Google, nor Skype. Huh? Well, Google and Skype are bringing the customers closer to the suppliers while maintaining usage patterns the customers know from “the old world” (i.e. the pre-Internet world). At the same time, the supplier gets in direct contact with the customer and with some clever guys in the call center she may buy something that she hasn’t planned to buy before the call ;-).
Like always in those broker scenarios the supplier is the one who’ll be charged. And it will be much more than for a simple Adsense mouse click.
Now, what’s the revenue stream?
Assuming the supplier has a Skype call center (which she has to buy), I guess it contains some sort of reversed-charge call functionality (right?). So Skype directly gets its revenue whereas Google will use the same mechanisms as it uses for the mouse click ads (revenue stream: supplier directly to Google and Skype).
If a supplier doesn’t have a Skype call center but just a regular phone line, Skype will use SkypeOut to perform that call which will cost Skype money. Hence, I guess the money Google “earned” from the click will be shared with Skype (revenue stream: supplier to Google to Skype).
I was wondering why it has take Google and Skype so long to perform that deal. Now that I thought a bit about it, its pretty clear: I guess the contract wasn’t that easy to set up ;-).
But at the end we’ve got a win-win situation for all (meaning the customer, the supplier, eBay and Google), which sounds extremely good to me. Well, I won’t be the one clicking on such a call ad, I guess, but I think loads of you will do ;-).
[tags]skype, ebay, google, ads, adsense, contract, revenue stream[/tags]