Adams is describing how marketing (tries to) work. Marketing seeks to identify customers.
In a manner of consideration, Adams is seeking to acquire better and more targeted search results, or skills in searching for products or services. Google Adwords tries to offers something close. But the Googlers are not very good at this level of targeting. (Yet?)
As for specifically contacting buyers, that's expensive for commodity gear. And what happens when you find and proffer a product to a customer, and the customer turns around and purchases that product from the lowest bidder; if you can't automate this and keep the customer acquisition costs (very) low, a business ends up a variant of the Brick-and-Mortar cost differential.
The middle ground - some form of a trusted concierge or consulting service or search service - seems to be one of the few potentially approaches from both directions; back to what amounts to a (trusted) middleman in the purchasing process.
Google AdWords, if managed properly, does a very good job at this. Take his example: For example, let's say you're looking for new patio furniture. The words you might use to describe your needs would be useless for Google. You might say, for example, "I want something that goes with a Mediterranean home. It will be sitting on stained concrete that is sort of amber colored. It needs to be easy to clean because the birds will be all over it. And I'm on a budget.
So say I am retailer of stylish, affordable outdoor furniture, among many other products (that is what is important in the query, more on the Mediterranean part later). I might have an ad campaign dedicated to patio furniture. Within that campaign I might have an ad group for plastic furniture (easy to clean).
That ad group would include a mix of exact and broad match keywords/keyword phrases like patio furniture, budget, cheap, affordable, stylish, along with negative keywords like expensive, wood, etc. The ads would deliver him to a landing page with links to hopefully appropriate furniture. On that page he can then see the various items that meet his basic qualifications - stylish, affordable, easy to clean - and click through to the items that look like they would match his Mediterranean home, with its amber colored concrete patio.
Reading through what I just wrote: I don't know much about the furniture business, but Mediterranean might actually be an important and useful kw to advertise on...
But Google is the concierge you're talking about. It has the description of the product on its page, and it has the description of what the shopper wants (your search terms). The algorithms just aren't as smart as a human being, and you rightly pointed that a (smart) human being is expesive.
The key problem is one of cost. As it is right now the customer pays the costs of specifically linking up with a supplier for a transaction. The supplier pays for some of the costs of the customer's search via advertising, but generally the supplier only pays for one-to-many interactions, while the customer pays for the one-to-one interactions.
The thing is that the customer can afford a few small one-to-one transactions. It's not hard for them. However, the supplier likely wouldn't be able to afford the costs. Lots of one-to-one transactions don't scale.
In a manner of consideration, Adams is seeking to acquire better and more targeted search results, or skills in searching for products or services. Google Adwords tries to offers something close. But the Googlers are not very good at this level of targeting. (Yet?)
As for specifically contacting buyers, that's expensive for commodity gear. And what happens when you find and proffer a product to a customer, and the customer turns around and purchases that product from the lowest bidder; if you can't automate this and keep the customer acquisition costs (very) low, a business ends up a variant of the Brick-and-Mortar cost differential.
The middle ground - some form of a trusted concierge or consulting service or search service - seems to be one of the few potentially approaches from both directions; back to what amounts to a (trusted) middleman in the purchasing process.
And a concierge service has inherent costs.