Access to information and communication possibilities have become nearly unlimited with the digital revolution. Today, we can find the information that we used to spend hours obtaining in milliseconds. But does this have a radically positive effect on our cognition?
Herbert A. Simon, who crowned his expertise in psychology and economics with a Nobel Prize, explains the relationship between knowledge and attention as follows:
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
The fact that we are bombarded with advertising messages from every angle does not mean we can pay attention to all of them.
Therefore, today, there is an economic model in which elements that attract people are more important than messages in communication channels. Let's discover together what this model called the attention economy is.
To learn what the attention economy is, we first need to understand what the term attention means. Attention is focusing a sense on a particular stimulus. As a result of concentrating attention, impulses from this stimulus are intensely transmitted to the brain.
Attention can be thought of as fuel in the process of acquiring knowledge. The senses of a person who pays attention for a long time begin to tire, and their brain activities begin to slow down. In addition, attention can be mobilised simultaneously against a limited number of stimuli.
The realisation of this fact has been a game changer, especially for advertising. In the not-too-distant past, the main goal of advertising was to offer as much information as possible about the product or service in the most precise possible way.
However, at that time, the number of advertisements that could reach people in one day was limited. So people had enough attention to devote to each ad. There is now a shortage of this resource.
Organisations today fiercely compete not to promote themselves but to gain our attention. They devote plenty of resources to research this topic and spend most of their effort creating the most compelling content and putting it in the most salient spots. All of these activities, which are done by targeting the instincts, not the mental interest of the user, are part of the attention economy.
In the past, using a product or service for free was considered impossible. However, many services are available for free today. However, this does come at a cost: our attention.
When we read a piece of content on digital media channels, we all come across suggestions for different content that may interest us. Sometimes we continue our journey of visiting the website through such suggestions, and this puts us in an endless loop that we cannot get out of.
Or while browsing a website, we come across an interesting image and find ourselves on a website that we are not at all interested in.
Sometimes we even witness that a suggested video starts automatically at the end of the video content. And although there is a button that allows us to cancel the automatic transition to the following video, we often do not click this button.
All these choices are made through patterns consciously created by organisations, not by us. As a result of testing the senses with many methods, such as eye movement tracking, brand new attention-grabbing techniques are developed.
While many media advertisers that are leaders in their industry today emphasise the value they give to their users, they often use their users' data and instincts to keep them in a cell long enough for them to pay attention to the advertisements.
According to Forbes, most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 ads daily, spending more than an average of 1,300 hours on social media in 2020.
Notifications or content suggestions sent to grab our attention constantly make us feel like we're missing out on something. That's why being away from our digital devices sometimes feels like a nightmare. Addiction to digital media and devices is a problem that needs to be taken seriously. Like many addictions, it can lead to withdrawal symptoms.
In addition, since gaining attention has become the most crucial norm, it also affects how we define ourselves. Many people care more about their social media visibility or likes than anything else, leading to uncontrolled extremism and, as a result, critical negative consequences in the long term.
Of course, one of the biggest problems created by the attention economy is that it makes it increasingly difficult to reach meaningful information. In the past, our access to information was more limited, but today it is just as difficult to choose a qualified one among many.
The attention economy is one of the inevitable results of competition in the field of communication and advertising. And not all content created to attract attention necessarily aims to trap the user.
So there is no need to get paranoid and smash our digital devices. Like in every revolution, it is necessary to adapt to new business models to survive in the digital revolution. As people learn about the culture of consuming the right content at the right time, harmful effects of the attention economy will likely decrease.
It is possible to create content that is meaningful and appealing to the right persona while attracting attention. As time passes and digital marketing methods become a part of the daily routine, we see that attention combined with proper targeting results in much more efficiency.
Therefore, successful organisations are those that have teams with a solid growth-mindset. And these teams act with the awareness that combining attention-grabbing strategies with valuable content creates meaningful results for both the organisation and society.
