“Pump Fiction: When Every Litre Is the Same, Everything Else Matters,” the latest piece by Matteo Rinaldi, Adjunct Professor at Luiss Business School and co‑founder of Human Centric Group, argues that when products become indistinguishable, value shifts to identity, community, and human connection. The article, released on July 28 2026, reframes how brands—especially those operating in highly commoditized sectors—should compete beyond price.
The Core Thesis
Rinaldi uses the petrol market as a textbook example of commodity erosion. As fuel grades converge and price differentials shrink, stations that rely solely on discounting see only transactional spikes, not lasting loyalty. The same pattern repeats across digital ad inventory, where ad impressions are increasingly interchangeable. In both cases, the differentiator moves from the core product to the surrounding ecosystem.
Four Defensible Levers
- Community‑Centric Positioning – Motorists are not a monolith; they belong to micro‑communities—business travelers, cyclists, football fans, pet owners, gamers, or families. Recognizing these clusters allows brands to craft tailored experiences, from curated playlists on CTV to localized offers on retail media networks.
- Meaningful Loyalty – Traditional cashback or fuel‑discount programs are easy to copy. Rinaldi points to Esso’s limited‑edition Pininfarina bike, a tangible symbol that persisted in collective memory long after the discount faded. In adtech, this translates to tokenized rewards or NFT‑based badges that embed brand stories into user identities.
- Behavior‑First Segmentation – Demographics tell who buys; behavior tells why. Two drivers of identical age and income may associate driving with status or merely with utility. Data‑driven platforms—DSPs, CDPs, and DMPs—must therefore prioritize intent signals, cross‑device journeys, and psychographic data over ZIP‑code clusters.
- Human Interaction as a Moat – In an era of automated checkout and programmatic buying, a genuine human touch becomes a scarce resource. Front‑line staff who greet regulars or provide on‑spot recommendations generate trust that algorithms cannot replicate overnight. For adtech firms, this means investing in account‑based sales teams and consultative onboarding that humanizes the buying process.
Implications for the AdTech Landscape
The shift from product to experience mirrors a broader industry trend. Gartner forecasts that by 2027, 70 % of marketers will allocate the majority of spend to experience‑driven campaigns rather than pure impression buying. For demand‑side platforms (DSPs) and supply‑side platforms (SSPs), the takeaway is clear: value‑added services—such as brand‑safe inventory verification, contextual storytelling tools, and real‑time creative optimization—must become core differentiators.
Programmatic CTV and OTT environments illustrate this evolution. A generic video ad can be bought at scale, but a campaign that integrates community‑specific content (e.g., a local sports team’s highlight reel) and rewards viewers with exclusive digital collectibles creates a loyalty loop that outlasts the impression itself. Similarly, retail media networks that embed brand‑centric experiences—like virtual try‑ons or gamified shopping quests—turn a commodity ad slot into a memorable brand touchpoint.
Competitive Landscape
Traditional ad exchanges compete on latency, inventory breadth, and price. Rinaldi’s framework suggests that the next competitive frontier will be human‑centric data stewardship and community‑driven activation. Companies like Google and Amazon already leverage first‑party data to deliver hyper‑personalized experiences. Adobe’s Experience Cloud and Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud are expanding into identity‑centric solutions that fuse behavioral insights with creative storytelling. New entrants that can bundle AI‑driven audience segmentation with authentic brand experiences will likely capture a disproportionate share of future ad spend.
What Enterprise Marketers Should Do
- Map Community Affinities – Use CDPs to layer psychographic tags onto first‑party data, creating micro‑segments that align with brand narratives.
- Design Symbolic Rewards – Move beyond discount codes; consider limited‑edition digital assets that reinforce brand identity.
- Invest in Human Touchpoints – Deploy dedicated account managers or AI‑augmented chat assistants that add a personal layer to programmatic buying.
- Prioritize Experience Metrics – Track engagement depth, sentiment, and repeat interaction rather than just CPM or click‑through rates.
Market Landscape
The adtech market is at a crossroads. IDC estimates global adtech spend will reach $1.2 trillion by 2028, driven largely by programmatic channels. Yet, as inventory becomes more homogenous, advertisers are demanding higher‑order value—brand safety, fraud protection, and immersive experiences. Companies that embed community‑centric data, symbolic loyalty mechanisms, and human‑first service models are positioning themselves to capture premium spend. This mirrors trends in other commoditized sectors, from fuel retail to streaming media, where differentiation now hinges on the surrounding ecosystem rather than the core product.
Top Insights
- Community‑first segmentation outperforms demographic models by up to 35 % in conversion lift (Forrester, 2025).
- Symbolic loyalty programs generate a 2.5× higher brand recall than cash‑back offers (McKinsey, 2024).
- Human interaction points reduce churn in B2B SaaS ad platforms by 12 % (Gartner, 2026).
- Programmatic CTV campaigns that integrate community‑specific content see a 28 % increase in view‑through rates (Statista, 2025).
- Brands that treat data stewardship as a human experience gain a 15 % premium in media pricing (IDC, 2026).
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