An Economy of Attention Scarcity

In my last post, I briefly touched on an interesting topic: the economy of attention, inventory and media in an online environment.

The relationship between advertisers and media is one built on scarcity. There are only so many 30 second spots, billboards and half pages available. Each piece of media had a different value too, depending on the content it was surrounded by, or place in time and space.

Attention though, was a lot easier. Because of the costs and legal restrictions associated with creating media in the real world, consumers did not have too many options. They had to drive past the billboard on the way to work, if they wanted to watch TV there was only a limited number of channels to choose from, and the same again for print. Influencing their consumption was important for those selling advertising inventory, but the market was not too competitive. At least compared to the internet.

Online, there is potentially infinite inventory. Creating space to place an ad does not even need to involve the direct involvement of a human. For the advertiser, the limiting factor is the audience, not the platform.

There is still a scarcity, but it is not created by the nature of the inventory, and it is far more fluid. This is not the whole story. The relationship between consumer, online media and the technology behind the platform is far more nuanced than this.