AdMarkt by Marktplaats launched

Today Marktplaats.nl launched their CPC/lead generation product AdMarkt in all 31 categories. AdMarkt had already launched in 5 categories as a initial test for the market. The in-house developed Admarkt is replacing Google's Adsense ads on the listing pages, and is supposed to be a better experience for both the buyers on Marktplaats, as well as opening up increased opportunities for product advertisers. AdMarkt is the first 3 ads on top of a listing page, e.g. shown in BMW.

Skype enhancements

That skype is pretty innovative is known, but the speed in which they launch new features and or new beta versions of their products keeps surprising me. And it only seems to accelerate, within three weeks they have released two new beta versions.

The new Beta has a couple of interesting features that open up new business models for skype, but also allow for many new business models for people leveraging the skype technology.

With SkypeFind skype enters the services space. Letting the users co-create a yellow pages on skype and voting for the business in the index seems like a great idea. Once adoption is high, skype could easily create featured placements or pay per call schemes to monetize this global services index.

Skype Prime is a huge business enabler - it enables users to charge another for the call at a rate specified by the "seller". You can set up any business over skype and charge per minute. Some business models jump to mind immediately; consultancy, translation, adult. It will be interesting to see what unconventional business will leverage this. There is discussion though about the take rate of 30%

Some other features were released as well, but I wanted to highlight these big two. I will try to follow this skype business eco-system. If you find any nice usages or mash-ups from skype - please let me know in the comments.