Source: Featured Blogs - Forrester
Forrester's framing reveals a maturation problem for the attention economy: after years of algorithmic nudging, dark patterns, and personalization theater, consumers aren't just ad-blind anymore—they're actively hostile to being *seen* being sold to. The business risk is the erosion of plausible deniability; brands that can't hide their influence infrastructure will face defection and regulatory pressure as consumers demand experiences that feel less like extraction. This forces a hard choice: genuinely transparent design, or expensive arms races to make manipulation more opaque. Neither path returns margins to 2020 levels.