by Playfuls Staff |
12th June 2006
eBay, the famous online auction giant, is about to detail plans concerning its popular Internet telephony subsidiary Skype, which will play a more important role in eBay's strategy.[more]
"We will have some news on Tuesday about Skype," John Donahoe, president of eBay's Marketplace unit, told an audience of software developers at the company's annual developer conference in Las Vegas.
In a press release, eBay stated that: "eBay AdContext is our new contextual ad tool. It will scan the content of a Web site and automatically return relevant eBay ad content. For example, a Web site about sports could use eBay AdContext to display ads for sporting goods listings or eBay search results for memorabilia related to a specific sports team. When a user clicks on the eBay ad, they are led directly to the eBay site (either to the listing, the category, or the search results page).
eBay AdContext was developed using eBay's keyword selection technology, which uses proprietary eBay data to match contextual eBay ads to the Web page. The contextual ads take into account the popularity of certain keywords on eBay, not just the keywords on a given Web site, making them relevant to what people are actually shopping for on eBay."
Newsweek magazine also reported on Sunday that the San Jose-based giant plans to encourage eBay bidders to embed Skype calling links into auction pages in a few product categories, including cars, real estate and diamond solitaire rings.
eBay bought Skype last year in October, for about 4 billion dollars, and an important asset for the popular VoIP application was the so-called "click-to-call" functionality, which allows eBay customers to contact sellers directly via text message, voice or video conference. Also for advertisers, is much more easely to place an add and then see customers calling on the web, just seconds after its being posted on a banner. Or it's them who can call a customer that e-mailed for a product, and without no cost.
Company officials have declined to provide further details during a panel discussion at the developers' conference. The eBay-Skype announcement will be made during Bill Cobb's keynote speech Tuesday evening at eBay's annual user conference here. Cobb is president of eBay's core North American unit.
Len Pryor, Skype's head of developer relations, said in interview that the company has been testing Skype integration with eBay in five smaller country markets in Asia and Europe, including Belgium. "The key markets will be coming online later," Pryor said, when asked about the time frame for embedding Skype features in the auctions business in its main markets of the United States, Germany and Britain.
Skype seems to become the next king of Internet. It boasts more than 100 million users world-wide, is Europe's favorite VoIP service, and attracts more than 150,000 dayly. It doesn't require anything else than a computer linked to the Web and the creation of an account on www.skype.com. It functions on every existing OS, like Windows, Mac OS, Linux and even on handhelds like PDAs (which normally run Symbian OS or Windows Mobile). Besides being connected to the Internet you just need a headset to hear your conversation partner and...that's about it. But that's not all: world PC manufacturer Dell will provide desktops and laptops with Skype pre-installed.
Moreover, Yahoo Inc. and e-Bay (with subsidiary Skype)recently announced the beginning of their collaboration in search domain and graphical advertisement, on line payment services, a dual-owned toolbar for browsers and possibly a "click-to-call" functionality.
The preparation for the commune on-line services has already begun and it will be continued until the end of this year, followed by full implementation in 2007. "Yahoo! offers an engaged online audience, which drives massive traffic through its rich consumer content and premium services," eBay president and CEO Meg Whitman said in prepared remarks. "Working together, we can create more exposure for our properties, which in turn makes them more valuable to our users."
As an important consequence of this joint-venture, e-Bay will only use Yahoo's search engine for its services. Graphical advertisement will also be Yahoo's privilege on e-Bay. As for Silicon Valley-based Yahoo, its search pages will include eBay listings, integrated in order to provide up-to-date listings of available products.
Pay-Pal will also become Yahoo's exclusive payment provider, with a top position on the site, and with the assumed obligation from Yahoo to promote PayPal to its partners and to make it on option for its premium services.
