I've been working with multipile clients in digital field for a long time. Their rigorous approach and counting the audience not as an indiviudal but as a number has been working for them so far, but as the competition is growing and startups are coming with their innovations in the market, audience incline more towards the brand which feels like "a brand only for them " which includes superb customer service, rapid response rate , clear communicatio and personalized messages through different touch points.
I think Inbound is bound to change the way industries market themselves to the audience