Starting this week, Skype have launched advertising on Skype, which will appear in the Home tab.

The following details have been released by Skype:

• We’re [Skype] working with some great advertisers, including Groupon, Universal Pictures, and Visa.
• Ads will appear in the US, UK and Germany and advertising sales for Skype are initially focused in those markets.
• You may only see ads occasionally. Our initial plan is to show an ad from one brand per day in each of the markets where advertising is being sold.
• The ads will appear in the Home tab in Skype for Windows, and we may experiment with ads in other areas as well.
• The ads won’t interrupt your Skype experience. You won’t suddenly see annoying pop-up ads or flashy banner ads in middle of conversations.
• We may use non-personally identifiable demographic data (e.g. location, gender and age) to target ads, which helps ensure that you see relevant ads. For example, if you’re in the US, we don’t want to show you ads for a product that is only available in the UK.
• You can opt out of allowing Skype to share this non-personally identifiable demographic data with advertisers from the Privacy tab in Tools --> Options.

Skype is a software application to make voice calls over the internet for free.