Close-Up: Live Issue - Adland not so brave about the new online world.(Interactive Advertising Bureau UK Ltd.)

Where were the traditional agencies at the Internet Advertising Bureau's inaugural conference? Larissa Bannister reports.

The biggest surprise at last week's inaugural Internet Advertising Bureau conference was not the fact that Bill Gates agreed to appear, nor that Sir Martin Sorrell was there to talk about how he thinks advertising will cope with a changing media landscape.

Given the spectacular growth of the sector and the fact it's an area most of the industry is struggling to deal with, the hardest thing to understand was why so few people from the world of traditional media were in the 450-strong audience.

Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, spoke for 15 minutes and used the time to predict a world where all media is consumed over the internet. He presented a convincing argument, notwithstanding his obvious vested interest.

'The notion of internet advertising versus non-internet advertising will become obsolete over the next decade,' he said. 'Newspapers will be on a screen; TV will be delivered over the internet. The future of advertising is the internet.'

Gates also predicted that more than 50 per cent of advertising would become targeted and highly personalised. High-definition internet feeds going in and out of people's homes will, he said, enable consumers to control what they watch and read. The information gleaned as a result could then be used to target messages directly at people based on their interests.

The chief executive of WPP, the world's largest marketing services business, meanwhile, is a man with a lot less to gain than Gates from a world where the internet prevails. Still, he appeared just as convinced of its potential.