Attention Economy Is a Modern Solution - Essay Example

Attention Economy Name: Institution: Attention Economy Introduction The attention economy as per Berman and McClellan (2002) is a buzz phrase utilised in the late 20th and early 21st century to explain the economic epoch that followed the information economy, the industrial economy, and agricultural economy. In the wake of information economy, as argued by advocates of the attention economy concept, attention of the human has turn out to be the rarest resource amidst the information eddy continuously shelling the consumers. The communication media proliferation (the Internet, wireless communications, print, telephone, radio, and television) as well as their overlapping and expanding reach, generates a circumstance wherein audiences are effortlessly distracted. So as to achieve and grasp the attention of the consumers in these setting, marketers have to provide communications, which audiences will find consequential and noteworthy. Therefore, services or products have to be marketed and sold not only based on their merits of satisfaction, cost savings, and utility; however, it must be with a substantial coating of symbolic narratives and packaging that bestow significance so as to seize the attention of the customers as well as money. The attention economy for that reason emphasizes and privileges context rather than content. According to Hogan (2001), the attention economy portrays a situation wherein, on Internet, the service, product, or content, being offered is essential but barely satisfactory. Therefore, to get visitors and users to stay on the Web site as well as spend more cash, the Web site have to feature an eye-catching image as well as user interface intended to boost the sensations that the business desires to harbor. The essay provides an insight pertaining to how useful is the idea of an ‘attention economy’ in understanding the current relationship between business, the media and audiences/consumers. Discussion According to (Lotz, 2007), there are some trends bringing changes in the media setting as well as compelling media firms to modify their operations as well as thinking: audience polarization and fragmentation, media abundance, development of product portfolio, the diminishing strength of media firms, and an entire power change in the process of communications. In this case, abundance is observed in the remarkable augment in media units and types. According to Bens and Hamelink (2007), the increase of media supply is considerably beyond the consumption increase both monetarily and temporally. For instance, the standard number of newspapers’ pages tripled in the late 1990s; since 1960s, the number of channels in televisions has quadrupled, and this has been enhanced by the increase of cable channels; the number of magazines has increased four times as compared to those of 1970s; more than one million Web sites are created every day. In the past, competition for customers’ attention was between traditional mainstream medias (television and print media), but the contemporary media abundance has generated competition not just amongst media but as well between media as well as other relaxation activities like concerts, sports, in addition to socialising at bars and cafes. Abundance as a result has generated audience polarization as well as fragmentation for the reason that the public is broadening their use of websites, magazines, books, and channels. This as per Davenport and Beck (2002) generates extremes of utilisation as well as non-utilisation amongst accessible titles and channels. For instance, in television people have a tendency of concentrating on two or three favourite channels. Therefore, heightening availability of channel does not generate an equivalent amount of heightened use. In case a household receives fifteen channels, then the average number of channels viewed is three. When receiving thirty channels, the average number of channels viewed increases to six, and when receiving fifty channels, the average channel viewed by every household member is just ten. Marketers comprehend this development and so they have reacted by widening their spending as well as paying little for small number of audiences. The use of audience has connote that competition is no more structurally and institutionally defined but rather is defined by the money as well as time consumers use media, and for that reason competitive concentration is at the moment based on the attention economy. The hitches endured by entity units of media have caused media firms to generate and run media products portfolios. According to Picard (2014), this reaction takes place because diminishing average revenue per media unit is making owning one media product challenging. In this case, the portfolios are attempts to decrease risk as well as achieve economies of scale. Besides that, such portfolios may heighten revenue if they include joint expenditure savings as well as resourceful operations. In spite of the portfolios growth together with big media companies, the companies’ strengths are without doubt diminishing. At the moment no companies’ offering basic media content amongst top five hundred in the world. Additionally, the media companies’ reach is diminishing, albeit the fact that they have become bigger. Each company is having less attention from the listeners, readers, and viewers as compared to the previous years, and their complicated strategic situation worries scores of investors. Therefore, most media companies are having challenges with their main investors, and fear being targets of takeover. Hawkins and Mothersbaugh (2009) posit that drawing attention to consumers has become elemental supremacy change in communications. In the past, the media space was regulated by the media companies; however, these days’ customers have gained control of what Goff (2013) claims has turned out to be a demand market instead of supply market. Consumers of media and communication are not just satisfied to be passive receivers any more, scores of are at present taking part in creation of content. This change is perceptible in the funding of modern projects in video and audio downloading, satellite and cable, radio and television, mobile media, as well as digital TV which is rooted in an end user payment paradigm. These days, for each dollar used on media globally by marketers, Jackson and Deckers (2013) posits that the end uses use three; however, in U.S. the ratio (1:7) is exceedingly higher. Globally, media companies are enduring challenges to comprehend and become accustomed to comprehensive internal and external alterations that are changing production modes, hastily heightening competition, diminishing their conventional audience as well as bases for marketing, changing time-honoured patterns of market supremacy, and altering the prospect of the companies. The desire for managers of media companies to recognize, comprehend, and become accustomed to the novel state of affairs heightens every day since such alterations can result in failure of both the new and existing media products and, eventually, result in the fall down of media companies thanks to loss of value. Comprehending how and why marketing operates is convoluted by the verity that it is based on state of affairs. Akin to other types of communication, marketing relies on the context, medium, receiver, sender, as well as message. Additionally, adverts have manifold intentions, amongst them is to resist competition, sell products, and create awareness. Still, whether marketing soft drinks such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola to teens through the Internet or machines to contractors through televisions or trade magazines, Heath (2011) posit that three elements are at all times at hand: content of advertisement, attention, as well as persuasion. For this reason, advertisers foremost create advertisement content, which must capture the attention of the consumers. After capturing the attention, the adverts then require persuasion, that is to say changing the behaviours or attitudes of the consumer concerning a brand or product. Daugherty and Hoffman (2014) argues that the two questions that marketers must at all times take into account are how to economically capture customer attention as well as how to change that attention into buying behaviour. Conventionally, advertisers were excessively worried about the last question (change that attention into buying behaviour) and were not worried sufficiently with the first question (capturing customer attention). Avowedly, the majority of previous research in marketing failed to provide much help in this regard, seeing that exposure to advertisement has been pushed upon customers. According to Pieters and Wedel (2004), since control of consumers’ is primarily based on where their attention is allocated, marketers must deal with the first question by comprehending the interests of the consumers. This must therefore be a stage that focuses on the consumer, or else consumers may well pay no attention to the communication even prior to its evaluation stage. As indicated in Thogersen (2006) study, media companies can thereby secure attention only subsequent to concentrating on the interests of the consumer as well as concentrating on their individual persuasion‐associated goals. Therefore, media company’s managers who are placing their own interests before those of consumers will obviously be ignored by the consumers. Considering an advertisement by a Netherlands-based clothing retailer Scapino, in its endeavour to market its diverse products cheaply, it broadcasted on the screen a paradigm changing between product outfits and their prices. The advertisement as per Teixeira (2014) was omitted by 72 percent of the targeted audience. Therefore, to capture attention while marketing, marketers must understand that attention is earned or paid for. The primary option is to pay for attention, whereby marketers are needed to pay for media time, like a one-minute television spot, or media space, like a full newspaper or magazine page. According to Teixeira (2014), media companies’ comprehension of the composition as well as size of their audiences are adequate and so may offer prices in relation to such factors. For that reason, media companies always use thousand impressions or cost‐per‐mil (CPM), which is achieved by dividing the prices by the size of the audience to know the cost of selling the attention. Noticeably, media companies do not essentially sell attention; rather they sell audience access, which offer the chance for marketers to communicate. Therefore, if magazine or newspaper readers flip through the adverts or television viewers avoid commercials by changing the channel, then it is the marketer’s problem because they will have to pay the media firms for such easily influenced readers or viewers. Bringing the Scapino instance back, the company had purchased 30seconds of television spot, but instead received only thirteen seconds of attention from the targeted audience. The subsequent option is to earn attention devoid of purchasing audience access directly. Rather than the marketer heading for the consumers, the reverse happens. According to Bennett and Berman (2000), attention economy has two aspects: intensity as well as duration. In this regard, intensity refers to the measure of the attention quality, whilst duration connotes measure of the attention quantity. However measuring duration is somewhat easier than measuring intensity. Attention quantity and quality can be measured in a laboratory setting using eye‐tracking technology that permits examiners to measure attention quality to certain objects like product packaging by integrating gaze duration as well as location. Milosavljevic and Cerf (2008) assert that measuring the attention intensity through which viewers or readers watch/read ads is difficult, given that it relies on every individual, advertisement, context, and brand. But notably, the consumer attention quality has been declining for years. According to Berg and Gornitzka (2012), consumers have increasingly stopped paying attention to advertisements information content since they are able to access enhanced and more information on‐demand on the Internet. Additionally, the cost of attention in the past twenty years has heightened nine times. Therefore, advertisers have reacted by marketing more to offset this, or have utilised other methods, like marketing the price to gain customers. This as per Haan and Moraga-González (2011) has unfavourable impacts on both present revenues and future profits, and can only be solved by looking for cheaper attention. New approaches like Advertising Symbiosis as well as Lean Advertising can aid in mitigating the increasing cost of attention. Eventually, so as to successfully handle this priceless resource, advertisers will have to amend their marketing strategies so as to concentrate to the attention accessible to them. At the moment, there are scores of entities who have grown to be millionaires by creating attractive blogs or social media sites which online users desire to visit. Their lucrative secret is somewhat undemanding: sponsorship as well as advertising. It is akin to the commercial television: where viewers do not pay to watching the TV programs since the programs are paid for by marketers, who, as a result, manage to present their adverts to audiences. Correspondingly, the consumers access Web services, like the Google directory free with the only price being exposed to a number of reasonably-sized but inevitable adverts. Google and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are greatly positioned to gather up marketing profits, for the reason that they can deliver ads to individual concerned with certain things. For instance, individuals who look for information concerning dogs in Google are precisely the individuals targeted by dog food manufacturers. Individuals searching for Web sites concerning chocolate will obviously be exposed to lip smacking chocolate adverts, and so forth. The Internet has enabled its users to get such versatile services for free, and so the marketers are delighted to pour their adverts at the users, and as a result the service provider is delighted to make money from the marketers. However, no all of such services are in fact profitable right now. According to Jussila et al. (2014), large firms do not automatically obtain attention on social media merely for the reason that they have lots of wealth. Daugherty and Hoffman (2014) affirm that having wealth can facilitate a business organization to create rerouting multimedia website, and create knowledge of it services or products by means of traditional promotions as well as media; however, if the created website lacks charming content it will not attract consumer attention. For the moment, small groups as well as individuals are somewhat empowered by social media and other online communication channels, for the reason that if these sites warrants the consumers attention then that site will confidently capture lots of user's attention. For instance, a company setting up a Facebook Page to advertise a chocolate bar can manage to promote its products expansively as compared to the traditional media. However, if the Facebook page has no eye-catching or attention-grabbing content, no customer will pay attention to it, and those who visit the site will just be curious entities such as company's competitors, workers, or associates. In simple terms, no one can buy attention since a marketer can pay mainstream media to catch the audience attention, but they have no power to essentially make the audience/consumers pay attentions to such adverts, unless the advert is fascinating. Therefore money is less influential in attention economy. The consumers’ attention has for that reason turned out to be a priceless commodity thanks to its scarcity (Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2009). Essentially, attention economy has developed into the currency of mainstream media and online world. If the marketer is planning to capture as well as hold the attention of the consumers, he/she have to make certain that he/she can compete with anything competing for that attention. For instance, social media has offered a platform for online business and marketing. As a result, millions of fan pages, blogs, as well as consumer-generated ads have been created, and all these novel destinations are competing for consumer’s attention. Therefore, marketers are no more only competing against other marketers for the consumer’s attention; rather they are as well competing against other consumers. This as per Wood and Burkhalter (2014) connote that advertisers/marketers must have the paraphernalia as well as knowledge needed to precisely target such audiences in order that they ultimately have communications with the correct individuals concerning things that are individually essential. Since the time mass media turned out to be attention seeking media, firms have unsurprisingly utilised these communications channels to market/advertise their products to large group of persons. This has allowed innovative concepts as well as ideas to be shared through mainstream media and social media. However, advancement of technology has made advertising techniques and methods more complicated. These days advertising involves enticing customers and generating needs as well as consumerism or changing luxuries into needs. Diverse free media like the many communication channels accessible in U.S. as well as other countries are obviously subsidized with marketing to aid in paying the overheads. The increase in competition has as a resulted heighted the desire for profits on enormous spending on advertising. Millions and even billions of dollars are spent by industries to capture the consumers’ attention, as well as to influence their preference. This time and again indicates that these media outlets receive lots of funds as compared to those outlets financed by TV licenses. Considering the over reliance that media firms have on advertisers and advertising, this can put forth unwarranted influences (tacitly or intentionally); in case the media firm reports something that the advertiser does meet the advertiser expectation or the media firm has financed a documentary that reveals dreadful advertiser’s practices, then the media firm as per Teixeira (2014) can be in danger of losing much required profits for continued existence. Conclusion In conclusion, it has been argued that amidst a progressively more complicated entertainment and advertising culture, together with the continuous connectivity to media as well as the infinite affluence of information at hand, the chase has begun to capture and retain consumer’s attention. However, changing this sought-after attention into purchasing behaviour remains to be an obstacle to nearly all media firms together with the advertisers. The greater economy as well entity businesses are looking for attention in the midst of the scarcest resources; therefore, making attention a link of strategy and competition. For this reason, media companies have started to develop novel methods/techniques of testing as well as measuring attention so as to exploit it for financial benefits. Undoubtedly, attention economy is an ascertained realism given that it represents a noteworthy change of emphasis clear of conventional techniques of attaining consumers, rather than stirring novel idea concerning how to generate long-lasting, supple and changing relationships with consumers. Notably, the attention economy is a multifaceted and frequently incongruous reaction to a media setting that looks less dependable and to consumers whose buying behaviour is time and again inadequately comprehended. References Bennett, M., & Berman, S. (2000). The Attention Economy: How the Entertainment and Media Industries Will Be Turned Upside Down. 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Tweet this, not that: A comparison between brand promotions in microblogging environments using celebrity and company-generated tweets. Journal of Marketing Communications, 20(1-2), 129-146. Read More