You better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone.
Bob Dylan said that to beautifully articulate the rising tide of the Civil Rights Movement. I'm just appropriating completely out of context to explain the sink-or-swim situation soon facing marketers.
(Instead of taking the time to craft an original thought - I'll gladly/lazily refer you to this great entry from Forrester forecasting the tectonic shifts facing marketers over the coming months and this "trends for 2010" post from eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey.)
The long and short of my perspective is this - I hate being marketed to...or marketed at...or however you want to describe the dim-witted shortcuts that pass for "marketing" these days. (See Dell, iContact, and Sarah Palin.)
Unfortunately, interrupt-driven - and lowest-common-denominator - marketing will always exist because - to some degree - it works and because it often provides to only mechanism for super-broad reach.
Fortunately, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. And it comes from relationships generated from the opt-in, personalized promise of email marketing and the influence and insight from the social web.
The technologies and tools are there - marketers just need to step up their game, get smarter, get personal, and stop spraying/praying.