What’s the next powerful digital tool for marketers to ruin with KPI greed winning out over audience experience and long-term strategy considerations? E-mail was on the ropes for a decade (over-sending). Mobile messaging certainly has its bad early players. In-app geo notifications are almost certain to suffer at the hands of consumer brands with too much money and not enough thought. But my vote for destruction goes to system or browser-based notifications.

Notifications should be plenty powerful. They are great for disseminating news and information in the place where everyone spends their time – generally on their computer, not necessarily in any particular software. If the controls were universal, simple, understandable, powerful, there is still a chance to rescue these from annoyed destruction. But, the 16 alerts I received this morning in Chrome alone, coming from an eclectic mix of places I may have once visited, tells me that this will get worse before it gets better.

Walk carefully because digital marketing needs to blaze trails without scorching them.