My Writings
The martech industry stands at an inflection point where three powerful forces converge. First, the vibe coding revolution is commoditising feature development—what once took months to build now takes minutes to generate through AI. Second, the agent economy is transforming marketing from human-operated dashboards to AI-orchestrated systems operating at superhuman scale. Third, B2C companies face an accountability crisis, haemorrhaging 15-20% of revenue to Google and Meta while drowning in billions of AdWaste, even as their martech vendors collect fees regardless of results.
This convergence exposes a fundamental flaw in traditional martech business models: they sell potential while customers need outcomes. They charge for messages and MAUs (monthly active users) while value comes from results. They protect features while intelligence becomes the real moat.
The vibe coding disruption accelerates this reckoning. When anyone can generate a marketing automation tool through conversation with AI, the traditional defensibility of “we built this complex feature set” evaporates. What can’t be vibe-coded? Accumulated behavioural intelligence from billions of interactions. Deliverability reputation built over years. Trust infrastructure ensuring compliance and security. And most importantly—proven ability to generate profitable outcomes.
My 200+ essays on marketing’s future have explored how martech must evolve from selling software to delivering growth. The following seven themes represent a fundamental reimagining where martech companies become true partners in profit generation, succeeding only when their customers succeed.
- Progency: The Hybrid Product-Agency Model
The most radical reimagining—fusing product with AI-powered agency services where payment is based on alpha (incremental growth above baseline). Instead of selling software access, martech companies sell guaranteed outcomes. This model:
- Takes on execution risk and shares in upside
- Solves marketing’s “Mission Impossible” by aligning incentives completely
- Transforms martech from cost centre to profit amplifier
- Charges based on actual lift in revenue, LTV, or retention achieved
- ZeroBase: Zero-Risk Entry with Pure Outcome Pricing
Eliminates adoption barriers by charging nothing upfront—monetising only on incremental results. This model:
- Proves value before charging anything
- Particularly powerful for retention initiatives with clear baseline measurements
- Directly attacks the “revenue tax” problem by demonstrating ROI first
- Shifts all vendor risk to performance
- Agentic Marketing Infrastructure
AI agents operating at superhuman scale creates entirely new opportunities:
- Workflow automation-as-a-service: Where agents handle entire marketing operations
- BrandTwins: AI representatives for individual customers that negotiate with brands, with TwinLedger (maintaining P&L for every single customer, and not segments)
- Composable API-First Architecture
Unbundling martech into microservices that AI agents and vibe-coded apps consume:
- Segmentation engines exposed as APIs
- Deliverability infrastructure as a service
- Predictive models accessible programmatically
- Campaign orchestration tools automated without human intervention
- Charging per API call rather than per seat, enabling infinite scaling
- AdWaste Elimination as a Service
Directly attacking the billions wasted on ineffective advertising:
- Charging based on AdWaste reduced rather than features used
- Building owned media assets (e.g. The Brand Daily) that reduce paid channel dependence
- Shifting focus from acquisition (expensive) to retention (profitable)
- Atomic Rewards and Micro-Incentive Platforms
Reimagining loyalty as precision behaviour modification:
- Micro-incentives delivered at exact moments to influence decisions
- Charging for behaviour change achieved not program management
- Real-time optimisation of incentive timing and amount
- Payment based on incremental customer actions generated
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The Race to Reinvention
These seven models converge on a singular truth: the future of martech isn’t about better software—it’s about guaranteed growth. Tomorrow’s martech companies will be growth partners, not software vendors, succeeding only when their customers succeed. This shift from “pay for potential” to “profit from performance” represents a complete inversion of the vendor-customer relationship.
The timing is critical. Clayton Christensen’s disruption theory suggests incumbents rarely survive paradigm shifts through incremental adaptation—they must fundamentally transform or be replaced. With AI-native startups already building outcome-first platforms from scratch, established martech players have a narrowing window—perhaps 2-3 years—to reinvent themselves.
The survivors won’t be those with the most features or slickest interfaces, but those solving the real problems plaguing B2C companies: revenue taxes paid to digital monopolies and billions wasted on ineffective advertising. In this new paradigm, martech companies amplify profits rather than sell tools, earn from outcomes rather than charge for access, and provide the intelligence and trust infrastructure that no amount of vibe coding can replicate.
The question isn’t whether this transformation will happen, but which companies will lead it, and which will be left behind, trying to sell dashboards in an age of autonomous agents.
