Two things grabbed my attention over the past week. As an Economics major, and lifelong fan of articles and information about Economics, my attention was called to a posting by Professor of Marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business Scott Galloway (@profgalloway). His posting is a good read but let me just capture the heart of it here:
“We’ve moved from an oil economy to an attention economy.
We used to refer to an information economy. But economies are defined by scarcity, not abundance (scarcity = value), and in an age of information abundance, what’s scarce? A: Attention.”
For all of us in the fields of marketing and media we have always been taught (and seen for real) that dollars want to flow to where the right eyeballs are. In our current age of digital connection and customer centricity let me say that I love the concept of the Attention Economy. This brings me to the second thing that grabbled my attention, being a subscriber to marketingcharts.com, seeing this latest posting.
By George Wiedemann
Media budgets are moving to where the eyeballs are moving. For the Brand to form a relationship with the customer – and optimize engagement budget spends – it needs to pay close attention to this movement. Let’s briefly examine the nine places where budgets are increasing by more than 50%.
Positions one, three and eight involve video, the top movement being to online videos – 66% of marketers increasing spend – then to streaming at 62% and TV streaming at 53%. You have no doubt been watching this trend, so just allow me to say – have your Brand join the movement. Eyeballs are moving there, and video commands attention.
Social media stories, influence content, and social media news feeds are moving at budget growth of 64%, 59% and 56% respectively. This is because more and more of the digitally connected customerverse goes there to absorb the Brand story, relate to Brand’s values, and trust other customer’s views rather than just trusting the Brand’s advertising. This is a huge change! So just let me say – have your Brand pay close attention to its life in social media and what influencers are saying about it. Then join the conversation in the most positive way possible.
The other top moves in budget growth are to ecommerce, online games and the metaverse. The one I want to comment on is online games because it is a big area that Brands may not be focused on. We will not comment on the Metaverse due to its growth being at such an early stage, nor on ecommerce which is a given to deal with for all Brands. The reason to focus on and discuss online games is because Generation Y – The Millennials – and Gen Z have flocked to online games and your Brand may not be paying that much attention to this. My son who is 32 does not watch appointment TV. He only streams if engaging in passive watching. Most of his “watching” is “playing”, because he loves teaming up with friends and playing competitive online games in real time with other players all over the world. His cousin goes to online game parties once a week. Let me just say if these generations are in your Brand’s target range you should seriously evaluate if you should be appearing in the online gaming world.
Let me close by citing another strong statistic from Professor Galloway’s post: 56% of Americans watch YouTube on a daily or weekly basis. Ninety-five percent of teens use the platform, and in 2021 YouTube generated $29 billion in ad revenue, which the Professor notes, is almost equal to Netflix revenue. My last comment, and you are probably already there, is if I had one place to focus my Brand to capitalize on video, I would make sure I understood what YouTube – the giant of video – could do for it.
George Wiedemann was founder and CEO of Grey Direct for 21 consecutive years of worldwide growth; CEO of pioneer Silicon Valley email platform Responsys; and CEO of The DRUM Agency. He is founder and CEO of Relationshipping Consulting, focusing on bringing efficiencies to large-scale enterprises through deep budgetary analysis and process alignment. George is also a frequent contributor to TheCustomer.
Very, very important to keep these kinds of insights in mind. Consumer behavior points the way for brands, usually well ahead of the traditional planning systems. You need to pay attention to, well, attention, or your brand will be put at a disadvantage – for attention and for profits!
Very, very important to keep these kinds of insights in mind. Consumer behavior points the way for brands, usually well ahead of the traditional planning systems. You need to pay attention to, well, attention, or your brand will be put at a disadvantage – for attention and for profits!