As humanity, we access information faster and easier than ever before. Moreover, this speed and convenience continues to increase day by day. However, this convenience causes a new problem in our lives as well as making life practical, facilitating learning, and preparing suitable grounds for development.
As the speed of access to information increases, we have difficulties in paying attention. The desire to receive new information, the feeling of missing something, etc. The end of processes leads us to a lack of attention. To explain the situation simply; We can say “Information Abundance = Lack of Attention”.
Perhaps each of us experiences the effects of attention deficit in our lives; We think that we are doing more than one thing at the same time, while we are dealing with work files, following the notifications falling on the phone, and answering the questions asked. However, at the end of the process, we spend the capital of our attention.
If phrases such as attention deficit and capital remind us of economic terms, we are at the right place. Because human attention is a limited resource, it is necessary to have time and interest, that is, there is an “Attention Economy”.
It is very valuable for communicators or information sources to encounter such a definition in terms of showing the target. The basic idea behind the attention economy is actually quite simple. Such a definition of economy facilitates the perception of a market in which consumers agree to receive services in exchange for their interest.
The concept of attention economy is very important for communicators working in the digital world, because presenting information is not a way of attracting attention, we have to start the process with the question “How and for how long do we attract the attention of the other party?”
in social media; 15, 30 and 60 second reels videos, 5 second stories, 140 character text summaries, spam solutions in e-mails and 15-20 second trailers of 3-hour movies… Have you noticed the common feature of all these periods? They’re short!
We try to give as much concise and effective information as possible as soon as possible! Because in the digital world, attention span is getting shorter. As such, human attention is also seen as a resource that has become limited. At this point, limited resources need to be planned and consumed and used in accordance with the purpose.
In the attention economy, there is an indirect value exchange process. The target audience wants a relevant, helpful, personalized service in exchange for their limited attention. As communicators, as long as we continue to provide relevant, useful and personalized services, we can attract attention and gain success to the extent we attract.
The attention economy is a brand new, exciting field for us that we need to research. We will continue to meet and work on it frequently in the coming days.
Dwt Mandalina | Ayşegül Baysal | Digital Strategist
