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Is The Attention Economy Dying? (theverge.com)
"The attention economy is dying, and it's not pretty," argues the Verge, adding "there is only so much time in the day to pay attention to things, and we as a society have reached the limit..."
"The base assumption that the whole edifice is built on is becoming unstable, because what happens when society's attention is entirely monopolized? A recent report put out by the media and technology research firm Midia underscores that point: "[E]ngagement has declined throughout the sector, suggesting that the attention economy has peaked. Consumers simply do not have any more free time to allocate to new attention seeking digital entertainment propositions, which means they have to start prioritising between them." The trend, they write, has persisted for a while, and only now promises a revenue slowdown -- as told through disappointing quarterly results from a few of the major games publishers. "Arguably sooner than most of the games industry would have thought." As Midia researcher Karol Severin says, "competition within the attention economy is now more intense than ever before."
The problem is attention doesn't scale. There is only so much time in the day to be advertised to; ads themselves are becoming less effective, because they're now everywhere. When was the last time you consumed something that wasn't trying to sell you something, or harvest your personal data to sell you things better?
The article also argues that a "substantial portion" of the attention economy has been captured by the videogame Fortnite. "Last month, Netflix mentioned in its 2018 earnings report that 'we compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO'...
"That Netflix is even acknowledging Fortnite as a competitor is important, because it means that digital media companies are beginning to concede that growth isn't infinite, and are shifting their ambitions in response."
"The base assumption that the whole edifice is built on is becoming unstable, because what happens when society's attention is entirely monopolized? A recent report put out by the media and technology research firm Midia underscores that point: "[E]ngagement has declined throughout the sector, suggesting that the attention economy has peaked. Consumers simply do not have any more free time to allocate to new attention seeking digital entertainment propositions, which means they have to start prioritising between them." The trend, they write, has persisted for a while, and only now promises a revenue slowdown -- as told through disappointing quarterly results from a few of the major games publishers. "Arguably sooner than most of the games industry would have thought." As Midia researcher Karol Severin says, "competition within the attention economy is now more intense than ever before."
The problem is attention doesn't scale. There is only so much time in the day to be advertised to; ads themselves are becoming less effective, because they're now everywhere. When was the last time you consumed something that wasn't trying to sell you something, or harvest your personal data to sell you things better?
The article also argues that a "substantial portion" of the attention economy has been captured by the videogame Fortnite. "Last month, Netflix mentioned in its 2018 earnings report that 'we compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO'...
"That Netflix is even acknowledging Fortnite as a competitor is important, because it means that digital media companies are beginning to concede that growth isn't infinite, and are shifting their ambitions in response."
The entertainment economy has always competed with the entertainment economy.
Guess what, they're competing with imported chocolate, too.
And skating rinks. And fancy restaurants.
The Verge did a good job of drawing attention to itself when it copyright striked two channels for reaction videos to their terrible PC build video and prompting the community to donate $7,000 for #SomethingPositive on Twitter.
My suspicion is that everyone is wrong that Fortnite is a popular game. Fortnite is actually the next social media platform that younger kids have jumped onto. It's a platform that importantly does not include their parents. True?
Actually, Wikipedia gives a nice definition of what "Attention Economy" is:
Attention economics is an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems. ...
As content has grown increasingly abundant and immediately available, attention becomes the limiting factor in the consumption of information.
All this seems eminently reasonable and well-supportable to me. As to what advertising executives and "content providers" mean when they use the term "attention economy", well they might not mean anything in particular. Such people often use words for how they feel rather than what they denote.
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Exactly. In fact, you could say the 'attention economy' is now beginning. There is no longer enough 'attention' for dozens of companies to experience exponential growth every year - now they are really going to have to compete. Like in the real economy.