The Audience Attention Dilemma is an infographic by Joshua Lowcock. The infographic was created to demonstrate that audiences and attention do not automatically equal an advertising opportunity. It attempts to explains the nuances of the decision-making process for marketers when deciding where to invest ad dollars in the digital advertising landscape.
The digital ecosystem has a problem where there is the expectation and belief that every individual has a right to be funded by advertising. This is false assumption and the result of a deliberate misinterpretation of the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution. XKCD explains it brilliantly.
I’ve worked in advertising for over a decade, and I can tell you that advertising budgets are finite and each and every day marketers decide where and when to and not to advertise – if you miss out, it’s not discrimination it’s the audience attention dilemma.
If you believe in capitalism and the free market, you must accept this comes with the freedom for anyone to decide when and where they spend their money whether it’s advertising, a good, a product, or a service. Just because you have an audience, or attention is not a guarantee you will get money from advertising.
In advertising, marketers generally want to reach the right audience and get your attention. This creates a risk that it incentivizes bad actors to create bad moments of attention in order to get an audience. Hence, the Audience Attention Dilemma infographic. It may seem like an oversimplification of a complex issue, but it’s intended to remind all of us (individuals, marketers, the industry at large) that where you place your ad matters, industry standards matter, and sometimes it’s important to avoid environments and people that thrive on creating a spectacle of bad attention in order to get an audience.
All views are my own.
If you would like a PDF copy of this graphic, you can get a PDF of the Audience Attention Dilemma here.
I was inspired to create the Audience Attention Dilemma by Karl Popper’s Intolerance Paradox.