Bill Gates, speaking at the World Economic Forum, said that in a few short years the television experience will be completely transformed from our present means of distribution.
"I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had," Gates said.
He's referring to the merging of PCs with TV sets, with the endless variety of online video content that will accompany it. The impact has already began to be felt as younger viewers are spending much less time watching TV.
Gates went on to say that the practice and experience of fixed program slots will be abandoned by those who want the flexibility that the Internet distribution system will offer.
In reference to marketing online, YouTube (GOOG) co-founder Chad Hurley said that the future promises a far more targeted ad based upon the user's profile.
"In the coming months we're going to do experiments to see how people interact with these ads to build an effective model that works for advertisers and works for users," Hurley said.
From the marketing standpoint, it is still very early in the game for video ads being a big part of the picture on the Internet. Even in the next couple of years it will probably still be in the early experimental stages. We do need to keep a close eye on it and think of ways that we can use it for our future promotions.
At this time I wouldn't be too concerned about missing anything or it being a key to our marketing efforts, it's still in the "beta" stage and will take some time before it can be counted on.
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