Speaking to the audience of Microsoft’s Strategic Account Summit, Bill Gates announced,

“There’s no way broadcast infrastructure over these next five years will not be viewed as competitive. The end-user experience, and the creativity, the new content that will emerge using the capabilities of this environment will be so much dramatically better, that broadcast TV will not be competitive. And in this environment, the ads will be targeted, not just targeted to the neighborhood level, but targeted to the viewer. And more and more as the viewer is coming to a TV set, either through just choosing off a menu, or recognizing voice, or some video type thing, it will actually not just know the household that that viewing is taking place in, but will actually know who the viewers of that show are.”

Print publications, classifieds, TV and movie viewing are all moving online, he said, to the point that within five years, “we’ll hit that transition point, and things will be even more dramatic than they are today.” Gates attributed this inevitable shift to lower-cost technology and the enhanced user experience afforded by the speed and breadth of access online.

Echoing Gates premonition about search is a Microsoft patent uncovered by Bill Slawski exploring popularity data for search ranking. Slawski points to analysis published by Susan Dumais, chief researcher for Microsoft, on user behavior to support his post. Dumais’ research, though a bit heady, certainly indicates Microsoft’s increasing focus on search (and advertising?) personalization.

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