The Market of Attention

If you're not paying for the product, YOU are the product.        

However cliché that sounds, it is true. And to absurdly high levels in today's digital age. For those who cannot wrap their heads around being sold by every website you've put your email-IDs on, here's a quick intro about the advertising industry:

The War For Attention

In any market-share war, one industry always comes out rich, Advertising.?

That is the market of people’s attention. Whoever achieves concentration of the masses’ attention can’t escape the devil of monetising it. Be it your favourite band, your community church or the free social media you love to scroll every time you get bored. Expansion & distribution of goods and services to monetise users is slow, risky, and capital intensive. Most engagement avenues often fall to putting this attention up for grabs for the rest of the industry for a price.

The Evolution

Old way of advertising was to make a good first “impression”. That way when you see the product on a store shelf, your right brain will fill the trust deficit and your hands will reach out. But what salesmen are selling today has evolved and so has the shelf. New advertising caters to products that are available NOW on the shelves of app stores, eCommerce marketplaces and websites.?

The Business

That said, the nature of advertising has some advantages. And I can't help but admire the business for these:

1. Advertising is evergreen: As long as competition lives, advertising will thrive
2. Advertising is dynamic: Attention is fickle and shifts from time to time
3. Advertising is expensive: Limited attention, every salesman wants it

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Next time you discuss Ibiza plans with your friends and start getting reels on Instagram from the most annoying travel bloggers, put your conspiracy theorist hats on and think twice about how THAT happened.

Like what you read? Hit me up on LinkedIn if you want to discuss more. Have you noticed the effects of digital advertising on your own habits? Tell me how.

#DigitalAdvertising #AttentionEconomy #Monetisation