Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking to the Washington Post, thinks there’ll be

“no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network.”

he went on to say this specifically means:

“no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.”

You can watch the whole interview over at the Washington Post

I don’t agree with him, buy the way. Newspapers are certainly declining fast and the business model for any printed product including books will have to evolve. But the printed product won’t disappear, it just may be very different from today. In segmentation, size, content, distribution method and frequency of publication amongst others.

IBM clearly spent a lot of time and effort polling 2,400 consumers and 80 advertising experts to come up with its report on the future of advertising. I suppose it comes as no surprise that there is really nothing new in what they are forecasting. The gist of it could have been written at least five years ago for some key points and ten years ago for most of the rest.

And they have the cheek to call the paper ‘The end of advertising as we know it’.

Here’s a taster from their press release:

Imagine an advertising world where… spending on interactive, one-to-one advertising formats surpasses traditional, one-to-many advertising vehicles, and a significant share of ad space is sold through auctions and exchanges. Advertisers know who viewed and acted on an ad, and pay based on real impact rather than estimated “impressions.” Consumers self-select which ads they watch and share preferred ads with peers. User-generated advertising is as prevalent (and appealing) as agency-created spots.

If you want to bore yourself with the rest, download the full 25 page pdf report here. To be fair there are a handful of nice charts and factlets in there you could borrow for your next presentation.

Seeing a future of mobile telephony very definitely tied to advertising revenue, Google has developed an operating system of its own to rival the dominance of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. The clever bit is that operators and handset manufacturers currently pay Microsoft for their software. And these operators will soon jump in with Google for something free, remaining largely unaware of the market dynamics tsunami that’s about to hit them. (more…)