I call the traditional approach, which has been around for 100 years, interruption marketing. With interruption marketing, companies run ads in which they interrupt you with unanticipated, impersonal and often irrelevant messages. They try to get the consumer to stop doing whatever he or she is doing and to start thinking about their products. They then hope that some small percentage of people that they interrupt will find their offer appealing enough to buy something. And a lot of companies are doing the same thing, so they're all fighting to cut through more clutter to do that interrupting.
Permission marketing takes the opposite tack.
It gives the consumer the opportunity to allow the company to deliver its messages. It gets the consumer to interact with the marketer in return for some reward, such as more information or a discount. So instead of waylaying consumers with interruptions, you get them to volunteer to have you market to them. And when you are talking only to volunteers, you are guaranteed that the consumer will pay more attention to your message. Because it respects the newfound power of the consumer.