Back in May Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 bil­lion dol­lars. Now the pres­sure is on to not only recoup that money, but start mak­ing some money off all those con­ver­sa­tions peo­ple are hav­ing. The solu­tion, accord­ing to Skype, is adver­tis­ing. And not just a lit­tle popup on the side of your Skype win­dow, they’ve got “Con­ver­sa­tion Ads” which are as dis­gust­ing as they sound:

While on a 1:1 audio call, users will see con­tent that could spark addi­tional top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion that are rel­e­vant to Skype users and high­light unique and local brand expe­ri­ences. So, you should think of Con­ver­sa­tion Ads as a way for Skype to gen­er­ate fun inter­ac­tiv­ity between your cir­cle of friends and fam­ily and the brands you care about. Ulti­mately, we believe this will help make Skype a more engag­ing and use­ful place to have your con­ver­sa­tions each and every day.

ArsTech​nica​.com has more, includ­ing the steps to opt out of per­son­al­ized ads and a screen­shot of how excit­ing and engag­ing a con­ver­sa­tion ad will be for Skype users.

Luck­ily the new ads are only enabled in the Win­dows ver­sion of Skype for now and only on audio calls.

Makes using a tra­di­tional phone more attrac­tive all the time.