Gates warns advertisers about changing TV audiences

by Staff,, Brand Republic 29-Mar-04, 09:10

NEW YORK - Advertisers should not take television audiences for granted and should start preparing for a world in which people watch television how and when they want to, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has said.

Gates was speaking at the fifth annual MSN Strategic Account Summit, which is attended by senior advertising and marketing executives, when he made the comments.

He said that technology would create better possibilities for targeting ads to certain demographics and said that advertisers were overly dependent on people being too lazy to get up during ad breaks instead of watching the ads.

But he also admitted that it was not clear exactly how technology would change advertising.

"Nobody has a crystal ball that says how this is going to come out," he told delegates.

He warned, however, that advertisers did have to be careful about not annoying their target audiences, using the example of pop-up advertising, which was once seen as a good idea but now his own company is building software to block pop-up ads.

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