A Last Chance
Marketing fundamentally exists to identify and satisfy customer needs profitably. The digital transformation of marketing (2000–2024) has shifted this core principle from marketers and customers to intermediaries – the Big Tech Mega-Monopoly Middlemen (BTM3). These middlemen now control the most powerful concentration of market influence in history and will leverage AI to further extend their dominance over consumers, marketers, and the free-market system.(AI answers & comments)
However, marketers and consumers can still reclaim their power from BTM3 before it’s too late, preserve the free-market system, and build the most effective direct marketing platform in history.
Marketing Evolution Analysis:
- Current Market Structure
- Buyers and sellers created the digital marketing infrastructure
- BTM3 emerged as dominant intermediaries
- AI amplifies intermediary control
- Free market dynamics are increasingly distorted
- The Exposure Era (2000–2024) Key characteristics:
- Interruption-based advertising dominates
- Surveillance-based tracking becomes standard
- Customer data concentrated among few entities
- Targeting efficiency prioritized over privacy
Market consequences:
- Privacy erosion
- Data security vulnerabilities
- Social impact costs
- Market power concentration
- Reduced marketing effectiveness
Strategic Market Correction The solution requires realigning marketing with its fundamental purpose through:
- Direct marketer-consumer relationships
- Credibility-based engagement
- Point-of-need (PON) delivery
- Verified information exchange
- Privacy preservation
- Distributed control
The past two decades marked the “Era of Exposures” where BTM3 persuaded marketers to invest trillions in 21st Century interruption-based advertising using “surveillance-based tracking” (SBT). They promised enhanced targeting through “right-person, right-time, right-message at lowest cost.” BTM3 obscured the true costs: privacy violations, data breaches, teen mental health issues, echo chambers, and weaponized targeting. The only real change was the creation of unprecedented monopolistic power.
The Solution:
- Marketers and consumers can establish a marketing network platform controlled jointly for mutual benefit, founded on credibility rather than exposures
- This platform delivers fundamental value beyond any interruption-based advertising system
- It operates at the point-of-need (PON) rather than point-of-interruption (POI), improving efficiency while enhancing all marketing activities
- Creates direct marketer-consumer connections through guaranteed truthful information exchange and intentional engagement
- Provides essential value without unwanted elements
- Enables rapid scaling for widespread adoption
- Operates with transparency and privacy, eliminating tracking and unwanted interruptions
- Features distributed control by stakeholders, benefiting the broader free-market system
- Built on a proven model with 20+ years of validation
The “Pedia Effect” platform (documented in a December 2000 patent application) demonstrated its power through Wikipedia (2001). It provided Wikipedia with credibility and perception as an “independent third-party higher authority” information source, overcoming inherent reliability challenges of volunteer-edited content. This credibility propelled Wikipedia into a top 10 global website, though the Effect was originally conceived for a commercial marketing network with even greater potential impact.