• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, March 14, 2006

Some media executives have long been touting the prospect of behavioral targeting, or the ability to send ads to consumers based on their interests, as determined by their online behavior.

This morning, none other than Bill Gates added his voice to the proponents of such targeting. And he didn't limit it to online ads. Rather, the Microsoft head focused on the coming paradigm for television.

"TV historically has been a broadcast medium in which everybody's picking from a finite number of channels," Gates told an audience of several dozen people in New York, at the annual meeting of Corbis--which he founded.

But in the future, watching TV will be a matter of "seeing what you're interested in, having ads targeted to you," Gates said. "That's becoming the standard way video will be delivered," he added.

Speaking from the 30th floor of the Reuters building in Times Square, he also forecast other changes to the media world. Print will be consumed on foldable electronic tablets; textbooks not only will be digitized and interactive, but also will include video. As for mobile, agencies will need to quickly create "new types of advertising that can fit into that experience in the small screen."