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The business of Attention

Posted on March 2, 2008August 24, 2024 by Unny

Much has been written about ‘The Attention Economy’. I heard about this term only a couple of months back. While I haven’t understood all the philosophical moorings behind this term, the fact that money is spent all the time to get people’s attention and there is a whole economy behind that is simply baffling.

When I heard this initially, I thought it is yet another jargon (I suppose it is) coined by some tired corporate executive-turned writer. Little did I realize that I make a living out of an industry which is all about creating attention and yes, there are businesses built around it. And the more I think about it, the more baffled, surprised and bemused I am.

The reason for curiosity on the business of attention was nothing but the IPL (Indian Premier League), which has off late been filling columns in newspapers, magazines and airtime in television channels. A lot has been said and written about. That it is good for cricket, professionalism will now seep into cricket, that more talent will be attracted and so on and so forth. I do not know anything about that.

All I have understood is that it is a brilliantly crafted business piece, and that is fairly de-risked. At the foundation of this piece are a cricket crazy nation and their attention span. For, majority of the investments have to be recouped from advertisement and ticket sales. Sony TV’s $ 1bn gamble is based on advertisement revenues. (Read attention). The returns for the corporate houses that have invested in various teams are from stadium revenues, sponsorship opportunities, sale of merchandise – all of which in some way related to advertisements.

It is money out of thin air. Not result of any tangible product or a service. A castle that is built purely on revenue from advertisements. Whether the castle is of rock or sand, time will tell.

Some Factoids from Wikipedia 

Herbert Simon was perhaps the first person to articulate the concept of attention economics when he wrote: 

“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” (Simon 1971, p. 40-41). 

For more on Attention Economy, read Michael H Goldhaber’s blog

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