Gates outlines goals for Microsoft's ad business

Bill Gates speaks out on the continued decline of newspapers and yellow pages for ads...I have noticed myself that many papers are in fact getting much thinner these days...saving some trees too...BD

Television, newspapers and all forms of publishing are being fundamentally changed by a shift to digital media, Bill Gates said on Tuesday as Microsoft kicked off a conference for large online advertisers.

"Yellow Page[s] usage among people below 50 will drop to near zero in the next five years," Gates told a crowd of more than 1,000 people from the advertising, publishing and tech industries at the company's Strategic Account Summit.

TV is being overhauled in a similar way, as broadcast media suddenly have to compete with videos posted to YouTube. Newspapers are moving to digital forums but finding plenty of competition for things like the job classifieds that were once their exclusive domain.

Gates said he has a lot of friends in the newspaper business, but added there is also an "inexorable decline" in the use of newspapers to get news, even local news. "This is a tough, wrenching change for them," Gates said.

Source: Gates outlines goals for Microsoft's ad business - ZDNet UK