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Skype has announced that it has expanded its pay-for-call offerings for advertisers. The company is introducing its advertising program, Click & Call Advertising with Skype (News - Alert), for the first time in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe through a partnership with Marchex, a call advertising company.

Marchex manages, operates and sells Click & Call Advertising with Skype, which provides a measurable way to acquire new customers by using Skype to drive inbound calls.

Company officials said that participating advertisers can have their phone numbers highlighted with a blue “Free Call” button anywhere online their numbers are displayed. The Skype software launches and the call is connected when the button is clicked.

Through Skype on a pay-for-call basis, advertisers pay for qualified inbound calls. Company officials said that call volumes are tracked by Marchex so advertisers can monitor the results of their campaign and also view detailed call analytics.

Click & Call Advertising with Skype supported by Marchex relies on the Skype software installed on the PC and Skype’s browser plug-in which is downloaded automatically in Skype for Windows 4.0 or later. Currently, the advertising program is not available on Mac or mobile versions of Skype software.

“Working together with Marchex, our objective for Click & Call Advertising with Skype supported by Marchex is to deliver a performance advertising tool that turns the Web surfing behavior of Skype users into calls to advertisers,” said Andy Sims, director of advertising at Skype.

Pete Christothoulou, chief operating officer at Marchex, said that the company believes advertisers have a strong demand for generating inbound phone calls and Skype is a promising customer acquisition channel that offers a large base of users who are typically familiar with making calls from a PC.

“Today, we are seeing a shift in the way consumers find phone numbers, the way they place calls and how those calls are paid for,” Christothoulou said, adding that as a result, coupling Skype’s reach with Marchex’s call advertising technology, sales team and service, we believe we can offer a high quality solution to large and small advertisers.

Click & Call Advertising with Skype supported by Marchex is available to all advertisers, agencies and marketing services providers. These include companies that have a large number of local and/or national business advertising customers, such as Yellow Pages companies, certified marketing representatives (CMRs), independent local advertising services providers, direct marketing providers and newspapers.

Earlier in May, Marchex launched Marchex Pay-For-Call Exchange, a performance-based call advertising product that connects advertisers to customers through phone calls driven from online, mobile and offline marketing channels.