#attention-economy

#attention-economy

Picture this: You wake up tomorrow and your phone is gone. Not broken, not lost - completely unnecessary. Your smart glasses show contextual information floating over the real world. Your smartwatch handles all interactions with a simple tap or voice command. Cameras everywhere recognise what you're looking at and instantly provide relevant data. This isn't science fiction - it's the inevitable next step.

Take, for example, advice that will supposedly change your brain chemistry, courtesy of someone who is definitely not a neuroscientist. Or my nutrition rules, from a dewy, gen Alpha sylph who doesn't realise what they actually have is a teenager's metabolism. Or 45 things you need to understand about a place from someone who has spent 45 minutes there. Endless lists of the bleeding obvious: eat intuitively, embrace nature, exercise compassion, remain curious, be childlike, contact friends, put down your phone,

The hardest part about marketing today is that competition for attention grows by the millisecond. Brands aren't just competing with each other but with millions of entertaining and talented TikTok creators, YouTube stars and Instagram influencers for the same finite audience. And if earning attention seems tough now, it's only going to get tougher from here. As global internet access expands, the amount of content, creators and conversations will continue to surge.

I often wake up before dawn, ahead of my wife and kids, so that I can enjoy a little solitary time. I creep downstairs to the silent kitchen, drink a glass of water, and put in my AirPods. Then I choose some music, set up the coffee maker, and sit and listen while the coffee brews. It's in this liminal state that my encounter with the algorithm begins. Groggily, I'll scroll through some dad content on Reddit, or watch photography videos on YouTube.

People in their twenties in the U.S. spend nearly seven hours consuming audiovisual entertainment daily, including time on social media, streaming series and movies, video games, YouTube, and music.

In a world where AI is increasingly turning up the noise and drowning out the signal, businesses and their leaders are finding that authentic attention is crucial.