Beyond Ads: Connect with Customers Through Intent

Despite record ad spending ($1.09T globally in 2024¹), brands struggle to connect with consumers. The number of ads consumers encounter daily is so overwhelming that most digital messaging is often not seen or remembered.

Digital engagement is broken.

Earning customer trust is the goal, but capturing attention isn’t enough to get us there. Brands who want to earn customer trust must start listening to understand and act on customer intent—the reason behind their engagement.

The Problem: Cracks in the Attention Economy

Global ad spending is at an all-time high, yet engagement is low. Whether it’s banner blindness, ad blockers, or only reading AI-generated summaries of search results, people have tuned out the noise. Their attention is fleeting and harder to capture.

The signs are everywhere: email inboxes full of irrelevant promotions, declining click-through rates, and reduced engagement on digital platforms. Bounce rates remain high for both B2B and B2C, and trust in digital experiences is low. Additionally, 65% of decision-makers admit their customer management solutions are broken².

Broadcasting more content, campaigns, and generic outreach won’t solve the disconnect between brands and users. Gaining customer attention is a small piece of the customer engagement puzzle. Today’s customers expect much more from brands. They want relevance and a sense that brands listen to them.

Shouting louder won’t get results. The path forward begins with understanding customer intent.

The Aspiration: The Rise of the Trust Economy

The brands who succeed are invested in building customer confidence through consistent, meaningful experiences, making people feel understood, respected, and valued. By delivering on promises, respecting privacy, and engaging authentically, these brands foster trust.

It’s hard to deny the results. Customers who are emotionally connected to brands have a 306% higher lifetime value and spend twice as much as customers who are simply satisfied with a brand³.

Customer trust not only improves loyalty; it develops customers into brand advocates. Customers who trust a brand are more likely to recommend it to others, which is invaluable advertising. At a time when online reviews and word of mouth dominate all other forms of advertising, brands should prioritize developing advocates through genuine interactions.

How do we transition from our current state to the trust economy? That’s where understanding customer intent comes in.

The Bridge: Enter the Intelligence Economy

It’s time to shift from pushing messages to acting on intent. But what is intent?

In the intelligence economy, brands stop broadcasting and start listening. Instead of relying on generalized campaigns and assumptions, they focus on the context of each customer engagement to enable true personalization. Building digital experiences without a deep understanding of the customer leads to being too generic and complex.

Creating relevant, memorable experiences begins with rich data and a clear understanding of customer context–who they are, what they need, how they behave, when and where to reach them, how they make decisions, and what tone or offer will resonate.

This data forms the foundation of customer intent. However, intent-driven engagement goes beyond collecting data. Here’s how the intelligence economy works.

• Understand the context: Who, what, when, where, and why customers engage or disengage.
• Act on the context in real time: Deliver dynamic, personalized experiences at the precise moment of need.
• Respect privacy and compliance: Ensure transparent, secure, and ethical practices to build and retain trust.

When brands act on customer intent consistently, they don’t just increase conversion rates—they build deeper, more lasting customer relationships. But delivering these experiences at scale isn’t possible without the right tools.

What It Takes to Operate in the Intelligence Economy

Brands require a strategic blend of data, technology, and action to operate effectively in the intelligence economy. They must focus on understanding customer signals, interpreting context, and responding in real time with relevant messaging. Does it sound impossible? It’s not. Here’s what it requires:

• Digital body language insights extend beyond basic analytics to provide a deeper understanding of customer intent.
• Generative experiences enable a personalized, end-to-end experience using contextual data in real-time.
• Advanced user journey applications facilitate the design of customer journeys for consistent omnichannel engagement.
• Generative media creation empowers the brand’s staff to create content to support the digital experience strategy.
• Composable capabilities scale on demand to support the entire customer experience (CX) lifecycle.
• Services support from gratis strategic assistance to deep systems design to help brands succeed.

This blend of deep customer insights and personalized messaging gives brands a roadmap to cut through the noise and build trust at scale. We enable brands to offer memorable digital experiences with end-to-end software capabilities and enablement.

Are You Ready?

The attention economy got us here. The trust economy is where we need to go. The intelligence economy is how we’ll get there. It’s time to stop just capturing attention and start building connections. Are you ready? Connect with our experts to evaluate your current software solution and assess your organizational readiness. Together, we’ll develop a plan to guide your brand into the intelligence economy.

Sources

1. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-sub-section-global-advertising-trends
2. https://zoovu.com/news/survey-reveals-65-of-b2b-executives-believe-online-commerce-is-broken
3. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-retail-study-shows-marketers-under-leverage-emotional-connection-300720049.html