Usefulness of Attention Economy Idea - Essay Example

ATTENTION ECONOMY Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Attention Economy Introduction Attention economics as mentioned by Hua (2010, p.168)is an approach to managing information, which treats attention of human beings as a scarce product, and uses economic theory so as to solve different problems associated with information management. Attention has been described by Teixeira (2014, p.1) as an allocation of mental resources, cognitive or visual, to conceptual or visible objects. Besides that, attention economy advances a marketplace where consumers’ attention is exchanged with services. In the contemporary epoch of web 2.0 technologies combined with the rapid expansion as well as growth of the Internet, online users and consumers are offered with information on various topics, in what Lanham (2006, p. 6) terms as information overload. Currently, the Internet is used by the consumers and organisations, and when this is combined with the enormous information clutters that the Internet presents, then the idea of consumer attention turning out to be the Internet currency and being acknowledged as the most fundamental and crucial part of internet commerce, materialises. In the information economy, human attention has developed to become a more scarce resource in the current information burst that is unceasingly bombarding the consumers. The proliferation of the communication media (such as the wireless communications, the Internet, television, and radio) and their expanding and overlapping reach have generated a situation whereby the audience are easily distracted. In order to get the consumers attention in the current competitive market, consumers should be offered communications that are far-reaching and striking. This analytical essay seeks to offer an insight concerning the usefulness of ‘attention economy’ idea in understanding the current relationship between business, the media and audiences/consumers. Discussion In this age, as suggested by Davenport and Beck (2001) people are living in an attention economy whereby the attention is the real currency of individuals as well as businesses. Furthermore, attention as a currency is considered to be more valuable than money in contemporary societies. Journalism and information brokering in this attention economy are progressively changing and so are the distribution channels, business models of the media, as well as means of producing content. This resulted in crisis and challenges for traditional media companies, particularly the newspapers, considering that people are nowadays spending less on media content because they can easily access unlimited online content. Besides that, the Internet is changing journalistic work for the reason that the web is always on where people get news as they happen while the newspapers offer news of the previous day. According to Riaz (2008), the changes that the media environment is experiencing have transformed the media companies’ organisational structures and have also impacted the job descriptions and working conditions of journalists. Many newsrooms have fired a majority of its workers and the media convergence has forced those remaining to learn new skills. These days’ journalists are expected to generate content for different media platforms like television, radio, print, and online. Besides that, a number of media companies and other companies in different industries have begun using Twitter and Facebook as a tool for getting consumer attention. Such changes have improved the workloads of marketers making their work hastier. As indicated by Anholt (2009, p.120), competing for attention is very difficult and most noticeable in the sphere of media (which also includes for instance, social media and advertising). Web sites, magazines, newspapers, television channels and radio stations are all utilised by companies from different industries with the goal amount of collective attention. Commercial mass media companies generate a certain amount of getting the consumer attention. They have spent a lot of resources to advertise so as to continually succeed in attracting a satisfactory amount of attention that can consequently improve the business bottom line. These days, even media organisations that are publicly funded like BBC in the United Kingdom and Yle in Finland are regulated based on the market model. Therefore, these companies are experiencing continuous pressure to generate information that is not just friendly, but also one that can attract their attention. Their success is therefore measured through viewer ratings or traffic to their websites. Most companies, especially those in the media industry try to attract consumer attention by providing information options that seek to hook them emotionally so as to increase the consumers’ chance of continuing to read, listen, or watch. This in consequence has generated situation where the communication style matters more than the content itself. The way that information is presented appears to be more important to the contemporary business as compared to the offered content, and this is evidenced by the proliferation of soft news and infotainment. The attention economy follows the demand and supply law since an increase in the amount of accessible information leads to an increase in the demand for attention. According to Davenport and Beck (2001), the demand and supply are not balanced, and this has resulted in widespread attention deficit. Therefore, most available information are ignored because they do not get sufficient attention. The traditional value chain has for long been considered as a linear sequence that was initiated by research and development and progressed through the steps of production, marketing and distribution until the customers got it. The manufacturer of the products determined the products design and pressed the end-users to accept them. Contrary, in the present digital age management of attention has turned out to be the central force while the linear ‘push’ to the end users has turned out to be the interactive loop; thus, changing the relationship nature with customers from push to push-pull. The individual customer exerts “pull” to help, design, produce and deliver the products and services that contribute to his or her experiences (Berman & McClellan, 2002, p.28). In order to attract the attention of the younger generation, the majority of media companies are trying to eliminate journalistic stiffness and become more mundane. The objective is service and lifestyle journalism that guides persons as aficionados as well as consumers. This form of journalism can be comprehended easily and it is entertaining in its form and language. Currently, media marketisation benefits from the fact that it is less controlled by politics than the previous years. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the indiscriminating view towards Finland, its powerful neighbour also fell. In this regard, the politics as well as Finlandisation of media, is not a challenge anymore, nut the independent Finnish media is still conventional. In industrialised societies, Peck and Yeung (2003, p.139) posit that attention has turned out to be a more valued currency than the money itself. Besides that, the more products are now more abundant and cheaper while the total sum of human wealth continues to increase. Still, the challenges experienced by the businesspeople lie on each side of the attention equation: getting the consumers’ attention and how to dispense the received attention in spite of overwhelming options. Businesses and media that do this always become successful while the rest fail. Nowadays, managing and understanding attention is the main determinant of business success. Without a doubt, businesses and media in the 20th century did not experience attention problem as compared to the contemporary businesses. Back then, the Internet was not available and a few channels of broadcast such as radio, print, and television were utilised to attract the consumer attention but were not competitive as now. Magazines such as Reader's Digest, Life, or Time were somewhat ambitious. After the outburst of various information sources, these traditional objects used for attracting consumers attention has since then appear fairly worthless. Still, those sources were voluminous when contrasted with what was consumed by the former ancestors. The Sunday New York Times has more information in just one publication as compared to all available materials for the reader in the 15th century. For instance, in 1472 the Queen's College in Cambridge, which was the world’s best university library, had 199 books. As a result, Francis Bacon protested of the accessible English books claiming that the entire stock, abundant as they appeared at first glance, exhibited to be scanty on examination (Davenport & Beck, 2001). Before the Gutenberg days, it took some years to create a copy of book, but the content was valued by the customers. In the past, as long as the person was not interjected by the bubonic plague or Inquisition, he/she could possibly read a book as fast as a contemporary student. The challenge was not finding time for reading, but finding sufficient reading so as to fill the time. Those days, information was considered as the market of the seller, and books were more valued than farming. Then, capturing the consumer attention was so easy. However, all these were changed after the introduction of the Internet d, the consumers are no longer looking for the producer, rather it is the vice versa. Certainly, information in the contemporary market does not just arrive in the form of pictures as well as words, but also as a business offering that needs attention so as to be understood and consumed. For instance in the 1990s, the grocery stores received over 15,000 new products annually, but today more than 40,000 different items is stocked by an average grocery store stocks. In the United States, the grocery manufacturers in 1999 spent a staggering 25 billion US dollars only on trade promotions; a large percentage of this money was used for new products’ stocking allowances, marketing, end cap displays, coupons, and so on. Interestingly, the amount used to buy attention is approximately five times the total profits attained in 1999 by the US grocery chains. Until early in the 20th century, the majority of people had adequate resources for learning the vast information accessible to them. A learned person in 19900 could still understand the existing information in nearly all fields of the arts and sciences. Still, the knowledge of human being was progressing at a speed that the human brain could manage. Afterwards, the size of the information base for humanity skyrocketed abruptly upward and the scientists increased in both specialisation as well as population; thus, uncovering more knowledge concerning the physical universe nature. This facilitated them to develop new technologies that, consequently hastened the knowledge search. These technologies were utilised for communicating more information to end users, who eventually generated even more knowledge that has to be communicated to other persons in the organisation; thus, the need for more bandwidth continued increasing, and so forth. Davenport and Beck (2001) posits that this concurrently vicious and virtuous cycle resulted in the attention of economy.   Formerly, the Internet aroused a sense of awe from consumers with regard to what these technologies could do.  In due course that excitement faded; rather, the consumers started feeling empowered by the ability provided by the Internet.  Nowadays consumers have reached a new phase of entitlement where the quality of content is no longer considered a critical success factor in the world of business.  In the past, advertisers were extremely concerned about the buying behaviour of the consumer, but nowadays they are more worried about capturing customer attention. Besides that, it is imperative for managers to understand that focusing on the business bottom line rather than on consumers can result in a poor relationship with the customers. This is for the reason that, consumers want products that are cheaper and attract their attention. Attention is a vital ingredient for successful advertising since the consumer attention market has turned out to be so competitive that attention is now considered as a currency. The increasing cost of attention in the marketplace has forced marketers to waste a lot of resources on expensive attention sources or decrease their brands’ promotion investment (Teixeira, 2014, p.2). The have failed to consider how they can procure cheaper attention and utilise it effectively. Nowadays, the majority of scholars agree that advertisements can only succeed if it gets some amount of attention. Nowadays, what consumers prefer reading, listening or watching is not essentially what has been marketed heavily to them; rather, it is what that pleases them the most.  This can be evidenced by Top 100 Videos in Google, which is a listing of popular online videos consisting mainly of amateur or anonymous material that is offbeat or funny but hardly reflects high values of production.  Therefore, businesses and media should understand that content and quality no longer matter to the consumers; rather, they are attracted by what appeals them. This can be evidenced by American-based DollarShaveClub a company that sells quality no-name razors cheaply competing against renowned companies such as   Schick and Gillette. Without workers and operating on a small budget, the company posted a video ad in the social media and attracted more than 12,000 customers in 48 hours raised more than 10.8 million US dollars in financing. Bearing in mind that DollarShaveClub had used only 4,500 US dollars on a video, but got over 9.5 million views in YouTube, 76,000 new Facebook likes, and more than 23,000 new Twitter followers (Skey, 2013). Another good example on how consumers’ attention is attracted by adverts that appeal them is Mint.com, which was launched by Aaron Patzer in 2006 as an effective way of managing personal finances online. Irrespective of the fact that the company was competing with established banks that had many resources, Mint.com focussed on slideshows, blog posts, infographics and videos leading to increase from 100,000 accounts in 2007 to more than 600,000 in 2008 as well as nearly 2 million accounts in 2009 (Skey, 2013). This made Mint.com a key player in the market of personal financial aggregation. Furthermore by 2009, Mint.com had already sold Intuit for nearly 170 million US dollars, and currently has more than 10 million customers tracking over 80 billion US dollars in debit and credit transactions and closely to 1 trillion US dollars in assets and loans. Various free media such as the different accessible communication channels in U.S. and other countries are understandably subsidised with marketing so as to enable them pay their costs. Competition increase has led to increased desire for profits; thus, evidencing why companies are spending enormously on advertising. Industries are spending billions of dollars so as to capture the attention of the consumers, and to impact their preference. This has repeatedly proved that such media companies get a lot of funds than companies funded by TV licenses. Media firms are over relying on advertising and marketers, and this has resulted in unnecessary influences (intentionally or tacitly. According to Macnamara (2010, p.296), it is imperative to understand that relevancy is the key ingredient in the attention economy. Provided that the consumers get relevant content, they will stick around and as a result, generate more selling opportunities. Precisely, when a user stays longer on a web site or social media reading news and so forth, there is a higher chance that the user will click to open the ad. Besides that, privacy is another key ingredient in the Attention Economy. Contemporary businesses and media are experiencing a lot of challenges in protecting the consumers’ information, especially in putting the consumers in control of their information. Therefore, the belief that in the Attention Economy, the information of the customers is accessible and may be sold and bought is misleading. Rather, the consumers decide what products or services they want to be offered, in return for their attention. To facilitate messaging of such ideas as well as to protect consumers, Seth Goldstein and Steve Gillmor created the AttentionTrust organisation. In spite of the enormous issues as well as considerable intricacy, the Attention Economy is imminent, and the web economics as well as the information explosion, are steering the consumers towards it. Therefore, comprehending the issues as well as adopting appropriate technology and principles is crucial for ensuring the future marketplace remains healthy. Conclusion In conclusion, the analytical essay has provided an insight pertaining to the usefulness of the ‘attention economy’ idea in understanding the current relationship between business, the media and audiences/consumers. As argued in the essay, the quality of consumer attention has recently reduced because consumers are no longer interested in ads’ the information content since they can easily access better and more information through the Internet. As pointed out, attention in this age is the businesses’ real currency and is more valuable than money. Therefore, attention should no more be considered as a product, but as an economic resource that is in scarcity. This is for the reason that there is an essential shift in the manner people allocate as well as value their time. Evidently, media companies are receiving less attention from the viewers, readers, and listeners than in the past. This has been attributed mainly by the fact that most consumers are no longer attracted by the quality or content of the adverts, but rather on what appeals them as evidenced in the DollarShaveClub as well as Mint.com. References Anholt, S., 2009. Places: Identity, Image and Reputation. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Berman, S.J. & McClellan, B.E., 2002. Ten strategies for survival in the attention economy. Strategy & Leadership, vol. 30, no. 3, pp.28 - 33. Davenport, T.H. & Beck, J.C., 2001. The Attention economy. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=376626" http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=376626 [Accessed 24 August 2015]. Hua, X.-S., 2010. Online Multimedia Advertising: Techniques and Technologies: Techniques and Technologies. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Lanham, R.A., 2006. The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Macnamara, J., 2010. The 21st Century Media (r)evolution: Emergent Communication Practices. New York: Peter Lang. Peck, J. & Yeung, H.W.-C., 2003. Remaking the Global Economy: Economic-Geographical Perspectives. London: SAGE. Riaz, S., 2008. Agenda Setting Role of Mass Media. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.aiou.edu.pk/gmj/artical4%28b%29.asp" http://www.aiou.edu.pk/gmj/artical4%28b%29.asp [Accessed 24 August 2015]. Skey, A., 2013. Top 11 Most Powerful Content Marketing Examples By Small Businesses. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.getspokal.com/top-11-most-powerful-content-marketing-examples-by-small-businesses/" http://www.getspokal.com/top-11-most-powerful-content-marketing-examples-by-small-businesses/ [Accessed 24 August 2015]. Teixeira, T.S., 2014. The Rising Cost of Consumer Attention: Why You Should Care, and What You Can Do about It. Working Paper. Harvard Business School. Read More