
The Microsoft chief executive used his keynote speech to talk about the future roll of content and advertising.
"In the new world all content consumed will be digital," he said. "Whether it's in one years to five years we won't be seeing newspapers and magazines and TV programmes that's offline and separate - everything will move to digital."
Ballmer also said that in every situation, people will be social and everything will be interactive.
"All content needs to be relevant where people pull what they want rather than have things pushed to them," he continued.
Ballmer also said that, beyond Google, there are few publishers making a lot of money from ad-based and fee-based models and called on the industry to question where future content will come from.