Google's Schmidt notes the challenges of the attention economy

VC Confidential has a great summary of a recent talk by Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. I was particularly interested in a few of his initial points for marketers and advertisers:

• We live in a world of continuous distraction and multi-tasking. Just look at kids doing IM, watching video, talking to friends while doing homework. It will only get worse.


• People's attention is the most important asset for marketers (similar in theme of the AttentionTrust initiative).


• The key to getting people's attention is targeted advertising instead of untargeted. He asked how many people read the paper this morning or watched TV. Could they recall any ads they saw?


• Society is trying to block untargetted ads with Tivo, spam filters, Do Not call lists and such.

Now Schmidt isn't exactly an unbiased observer, since Google is the largest targeted advertising channel on the Internet, but these points rang true to me. For us here at Blackfriars, the attention economy drives a couple conclusions:

1. Narrow is better than broad. It is better to spend an equal amount of money to hit 50 people with a message they are deeply interested in than 500 people who are picked at random. The day of the laws of large numbers are, well, numbered.


2. Less messaging is more. The tyranny of too much says that when you have someone's attention, we have to deliver value quickly and succinctly to stand out. That means short messages with powerful ideas packed into them. Google's concept of doing ads in 70 characters of text is just the leading edge of this trend.

But perhaps others have a different take. I pose the question to readers: what are you doing differently to gain mindshare in the Attention Economy?

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Attention Economy, Business, Eric Schmidt, Google, Marketing, Targeting, Tyranny of too much, Venture Capital