The Mid-Funnel Didn’t Disappear. We Ignored It.

A funny thing is happening in marketing right now, at a pace we've never before experienced.

AI is reshaping the top and bottom of the marketing funnel... at the same time.

Top-funnel? AI is producing creative, writing copy, and democratizing ad buying.

-> Bottom funnel? AI is predicting the next purchase, running bidding models, optimizing conversions in real time.

Even Google, Meta, and Amazon recognize their ad dominance is at stake and have been increasing the velocity of platform evolution to capitalize on this tectonic shift.

But the middle funnel — where persuasion actually happens?

Silence.

We’ve automated awareness.

We’ve automated conversion.

And somehow… we forgot about consideration.

The mid-funnel didn’t die. We just stopped talking to it.

And if you are a local businesses — you are paying the cost.

Think About Your Own Behavior

You don’t buy a car because you saw one ad during Monday Night Football. And you also don't start searching online for new Kia's on a whim.

You buy because:

• You keep seeing the Kia Telluride in your neighborhood
• Your friends are talking about it
• You drive by the dealership
• You get reminded again at the right moment

That’s not “top-funnel awareness.” And it's not "algorithmic bottom-funnel optimization" either.

That’s proximity-driven persuasion. That's the middle where the magic happens.

Advertisers got obsessed with two extremes.

🎯 Top of Funnel: Reach everyone in the right demo across the fragmented media landscape at the optimal frequency level

💳 Bottom of Funnel: Convert intent of the potential buyer right now

Meanwhile the most valuable audience vanished from focus:

People who live near your stores, look like your customers, and are primed to consider you — if you just showed up.

• The families near the Kia dealership.
• The parents three miles away from the regional health clinic.
• The dads who need a dependable HVAC technician for annual servicing.
• The neighborhoods around underperforming retail locations of national retailer.

They’re not “in-market yet.” But they will be. Unless your competitor moves them first.

Real-world persuasion has always been geographical.

We forgot that as an industry.

AI + identity should have revived the middle. Instead it's skipping it.

AI can now predict who’s likely to buy. Identity can resolve the household.

But without location and context, you only optimize the endpoints.

If AI is the engine, geography is the steering wheel.

And the brands who win next won’t just target people…

They’ll target places.

Neighborhoods. Communities. Households near stores and service areas.‍

Proximity is the new performance metric.

CTV is built for this moment

Streaming + household identity + neighborhood intelligence = the most powerful mid-funnel tool in 20 years.

Not broad reach. Not hyper-precision on 30-day buyers.

Right-place, right-audience, right-time persuasion.

That’s why we built Instant Audiences at Blockgraph — not to chase clicks, but to restore the part of marketing that actually creates demand.

To help brands show up where consideration forms: in communities, not just IP addresses.

The Path Ahead

We automated the funnel. Now we need to re-humanize the middle of it.

Curious where others stand:

👉 Has the industry forgotten the middle, or,

👉 Are we finally about to rediscover it?
‍

Jason Manningham is Blockgraph's CEO and Co-Founder.

‍