The New York Times chimes in on the Attention Economy

Two articles in today's New York Times converge on the same driving force we mentioned was reshaping the media markets last week: Advertisers are relentlessly pursuing shrinking consumer attention, caused by the tyranny of too much. The first of these articles talks about how Interpublic Group is studying how to reach consumers who are splitting their attention between TV and the Internet. It cites an important point that certainly bodes ill for the shared attention model.

It does seem certain, though, that a viewer who is multitasking is not doing those activities with equal interest. "Terms like multitasking imply equal attention," said Mike Bloxham, director of testing and assessment at Ball State. "But cognitive science tells us this isn't possible. You have to give priority to one in order to absorb the messages."

And while the article concludes by saying that these types of studies haven't affected the TV advertising business yet, the other article in the Times today observes that at least according to upfront advertising sales, the affects of the attention economy are already being felt by the TV networks.

Last spring, during the upfront market ahead of the 2005-6 season, advertisers agreed to buy an estimated $9.1 billion worth of commercial time on the six biggest broadcast networks. That was slightly less than they bought in the upfront before the 2004-5 season, suggesting that the movement of money to the new media was under way.

Because of the uncertainty that new media are bringing to this upfront market, analysts are not offering as many forecasts as they usually do. Some predict the total could increase modestly, by $100 million to $300 million, because of the appeal of the new-media opportunities. Others say those media outlets will only slow the flow of ad dollars from broadcast TV, resulting in a total similar to or down slightly from last spring's.

In my opinion, people predicting an increasing upfront market are banking on the "greater fool" theory: there's always a greater fool than you to buy what you're marketing. But sooner or later, advertisers are going to figure out what Johnson and Johnson already has: that committing to to an up front buy of TV ad time is a bad bet when the media landscape is changing. My prediction: the upfront TV sales will fall 3-5% short of what they were last year. And that's just the beginning of the changes coming in the scarce attention economy.

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