Attention Economy
Attention economics is an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity. The ultimate price of all the companies is how to grab attention.
We are living in a world of abundance, and scarcity is a thing of the past. At this point in time, we are living on surplus. We produce more products than what we consume. It is no more a supply-side constraint, and it is all about the capacity to consume.
All this boils down to how we can get hold of human attention. If there is a way to grab the attention of the human, companies can sell anything. This is making the companies invest in products that grab your complete attention.
Now, most of the companies figured out a way to captivate our attention. Let’s say Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Netflix, Hulu, or Prime. They know how to keep you engaged. They know when our brain starts wavering, so they can change the content and make them binge watch things. We are like a deer caught staring at the headlight.
Once the companies have our attention, they can sell anything. In today’s economy, there is no need to hard sell, show the product passively. We will subconsciously buy the products as if we are doing it out of free will.
