On a busy evening in Madurai, a small tea stall owner watches people walk past his shop. Ten years ago, customers would simply notice the aroma of tea and stop by. Today, many of those same people are walking while staring at their phones. Some are checking maps, some are scrolling Instagram, and some are searching for places nearby. The world didn’t suddenly change overnight. It slowly shifted — one smartphone, one search, and one social media post at a time. And somewhere along the way, marketing quietly moved from streets to screens. When the Marketplace Moved Into the Phone Imagine the old Madurai market streets. Shop owners calling out to customers, banners hanging above shops, word-of-mouth spreading from one neighborhood to another. That used to be marketing. Now imagine the same scenario happening inside a phone. Instead of asking a friend for a recommendation, people type a search. Instead of walking street to street, they scroll through reviews. Instead of seeing a bann...