Attention Economy (2)

Attention Economy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy


Relationship with advertising

"Attention economics" today is primarily concerned with the problem of getting consumers to consume advertising. Traditional media advertisers followed a model that suggested consumers went through a linear process they called AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire and Action(Advance theory: AISAS). Attention is therefore a crucial and the first stage in the process of converting non-consumers. Since the cost to transmit advertising to consumers is now sufficiently low that more ads can be transmitted to a consumer than the consumer can process (see clutter (advertising), and, inevitably Spam (electronic)), the consumer's attention becomes the scarce resource to be allocated. In 2005, there was thus a surge of interest in attention economics as applied to advertising:

• The non-profit organization AttentionTrust.org was founded with a mission to "guarantee users' rights to own, move, and exchange their attention data" (AttentionTrust.org 2005). This involves transmitting the user's click stream to a remote site for resale to advertisers.
• O'Reilly Media announced that "The Attention Economy" would be the focus of the 2006 meeting of their annual Emerging Technology Conference
• Consultants began offering expertise in the attention economy as applied to advertising (Haque 2005). "Across consumer markets, attention is becoming the scarcest - and so most strategically vital - resource in the value chain. Attention scarcity is fundamentally reshaping the economics of most industries it touches; beginning with the media industry."

Reference for Wikipedia