What is Attention Economy?
The Role of Smartphones in Attention Economy
In advanced societies like those of the world we live in today, certain technologies and concepts become more refined. More so, does something such as the economy and balance of our communicative infrastructure, since nowadays almost anything has a price. This is also applicable to the resource of the consumers’ attention that is given to advertised content, whether it is a traditional advert, written article, or a subscription to a stream of various content.
Due to the great amount of information that is made available, there is also a limited amount of time and attention that can be given by most people. It is described by psychologist Herbert A. Simon as a “bottleneck”, the same person who theorised the concept, and that is precisely the effect occurring, with the human brain only able to process only so much information at a time. Simon (1971), had noticed that the information systems of many designers were mislabelled to be scarce in information rather than scarce in attention, and had designed their systems the other way around.
The resource of attention may be seen as an exchangeable entity, where it has an important value that makes adverts in our society work or be ignored. From the early days of every person’s life, attention is something personal that is required for survival, just as babies cry to alert their parents about something wrong. Similarly, today when somebody or an organisation wants to send a message and rally support for a movement about a cause, it is attention that is required. Just like Phonebloks needed attention to get support on its modular smartphone concept in 2013, and sent out as much social media activity at one go in order to set a trend going and get noticed (OneArmy,n.d.).
Today, it is incentivised that companies keep their users on their platforms and website for as long as possible (Kane, 2019), giving them the control they need to gain analytical data and reshuffle their users between their offered products if the need arises. This can be done by sponsoring or promoting other approved brands and websites, or even creating a public company partnership that makes users feel part of this community, and may develop a feeling of loyalty and ultimately priority in attention towards the brand.
Gaining attention in the first place uses a myriad of ways and techniques in order to do so. Such as using eye catching animations, photos of faces, use of blank or negative space, and strong contrasting colours. Other ways include embedded adverts, where the user has indirectly committed his interest by watching half a video or playing a game on an app, and having a short advert display for a short time that cannot be skipped until its time has passed. New ways of promoting other content in locations that are usually advert-free are always being tried out, such as with promoted landmarks on Google maps that have paid for their location to stand out amongst the rest. Such an advert could be very effective, as when requiring a quick search for a place to go, the first result may often be the only option to consider by most.
References:
Herbert, S. A., (1971). Designing organizations for an information-rich world. The John Hopkins Press. https://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=33748
Kane, L. (2019). The Attention Economy. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/attention-economy/
OneArmy. (n.d.). Phoneblocks. https://www.onearmy.earth//project/phonebloks
This blog is a project for Study Unit DGA3008, University of Malta.
