Research & advisory · TMT
Three industries became one system.
Telecommunications, media, and technology now measure, monetize, and optimize each other’s activity, even when that activity is not human. That is where our work begins.
- 1
Telecommunications
- 2
Media
- 3
Technology
01How we see it
One interdependent system
Understanding the internet means understanding how three industries grew into one, and where they now depend on each other more than anyone intended.
- The connectionTelecommunications
- Connected people and ideas, and built the network that carries almost everything we now do.
- The attentionMedia
- Monetized people’s attention, turning what we watch and read into the marketplace’s primary currency.
- The automationTechnology
- Automated (and increasingly imitated) human activity, until the line between the two grew hard to see.
02The landscape
A few markers worth sitting with
None of these numbers is the whole story. Together, they describe a system drifting away from the people it was built to serve.
53%+1
of web traffic is now automated, not human
$1.3T2
in global advertising revenue forecast for 2026
36¢3
of each programmatic dollar effectively reaches consumers
485TWh4
of electricity used by data centres in 2025
03How we work
One paradigm, four solutions
The same frameworks carry through everything we do: from the boardroom to the research we publish, into the home, and into the courtroom.
- Boards & executivesEnterpriseSenior advisors for the decisions where the deepest technical detail shapes the highest-level choice. On call when it can’t wait, embedded when it shouldn’t.
- Commissioned & proprietaryResearch & IPCommissioned research on media properties, software vendors, categories, and markets, plus proprietary IP built with industry specialists. It is the foundation of everything else we do.
- FamiliesConsumerBringing enterprise-grade digital security and efficiency into the home, with education and applied tools for families.
- CounselLegal & DisputesExpert witnesses and technical advisors in commercial disputes since 2014: four experts, more than 30 matters, and over $5 billion in disputes and damages. Increasingly, the question is whether the traffic was real.
Google Is the East India Company of the Internet
Two years after I first made this comparison, the courts have said out loud what the metaphor implied: a private company that became a government over the internet’s trade routes.
The Order of Collapse: Which TMT Pillar Caved to Automation First
Telecom, media, and technology did not fall to automation at once. They caved in order: telecom, then media, then tech. And the sequence follows one rule.
Catching Rain: Why Internet Advertising Works, and Why Marketers Still Go Thirsty
A Futureproof TMT perspective on marketing funnels, walled gardens, the open web, and CleanTap. Internet advertising works, but only through collection and concentration.
For organizations
Built for the system as it is.
Discuss a technical audit, advisory retainer, or architecture review with our team.
For counsel
When digital systems become evidence.
Independent expert analysis of advertising, measurement, and automated-traffic claims. Conflicts are checked first, confidentially.