Slashdot Mirror
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?
"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?"
I guess that means there is still a group beyond that refused to be suckered. Funnily, I didn't explicitly try to avoid ads. They just happen to not appear with scripting disabled.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
1. If I'm your subscriber, I'm not your free QA dev/beta tester
2. If I'm your subsciber, I'm not going to have patience for an ad platform.
3. Breaking up a product into DLC'S may chase me away forever.
4. I don't have time to be pinched for pennies.
5. I don't have time for fecal level support.
No way we have reached the end of the attention economy. We still have not had all the people complaining about big attention and where are all the journalists saying that peak attention is here.
Economic systems are based on scarcity. The fact that our attention is limited is the reason that there can be an attention economy. It doesn't mean the opposite, that the attention economy has come to an end.
Netflix stated that 'we compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO'. How are they measuring this? How do they know I'm playing Fortnite and not doing something unrelated like web development, programming, finishing the book "Atomic Habits", finishing reading some novel like "The King's Blood", or commenting on a tech forum? I would agree that all metrics point to a lot of people playing Fortnite, and maybe other metrics like less people watching Netflix, but how do they correlate the two?
For years everyone has known that using a cellphone when driving is dangerous. The evidence is overwhelming. Yet the federal government has done nothing about it, largely due to the telecom lobbyists. But local governments are taking notice and passing laws. Several of them where I live have done just that due to pressures from their constituents.
To me, this is a sign of backlash against mobile devices. People walking around like fucking zombies glued to their phones. It is similar in some ways to the backlash against smoking. It had nothing to do with the fact that smoking is bad for the smoker. It had everything to do with the fact that it stinks and it potentially bad for the non smoker.
Sooner or later the phone zombie will be shunned and instead of being seen as hip will be seen as a loser. Everything goes in cycles and this is yet another one, only to be replaced by the next fad.