This is a very good description of the shift to digital marketing. And your suggested approaches will move us further into the realm of effective digital marketing.

One of the digital challenges is understanding the context of the visitor, and the intent of their current visit to cisco.com. Using the TV example, are we talking to the father (decision-maker), or the son (key influencer)? This messaging will be different.

Re intent - are we at the store for TVs because we have time to kill, or because we are ready to buy?

These distinctions become important in sales to medium/large companies where the final buy is determined by multiple people with different needs (performance, security, cost, etc). So understanding what is "right" about the "right person" becomes important.

Marketing IT has already made great progress in this realm, and vendors often cite Cisco's advanced progress (independently confirmed in discussion with our peer enterprise partners).

The success in this journey requires close teamwork between Marketing (knowledge of what "right" means) and IT (how to technically cull out "right" for targeting) to win.

Your post highlights the teamwork is underway!