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The media have been mining human attention – the ultimate finite resource – for centuries. Traditionally, they have done so in two ways: charging for access and selling impressions. Charging for access is straightforward. It involves offering people something fun or valuable enough to do with their spare attention that they’ll pay for it. Selling impressions involves carving out small slices of the attention that a media property draws and subletting them to sponsors…Between these standard points on the spectrum lie many mutant models.
In almost all other cases, there is no direct link between demand created in the traditional offline media and the ful-fillment of that demand. This structural disconnect has huge ramifications. Today’s mass media are the world economy’s dominant agents of demand generation (with the likely exception of our biological drives). They make us aware of goods and services, and tell us where to get them. They reign as our arbiters of taste, fashion, and relevance. Put simply, they make us want to buy. But when offline media are involved, demand cannot be fulfilled within the context of its creation. I may fall in love with the new Beastie Boys song on my way to work. Hearing it may get me primed and ready to buy the new Beastie Boys album. But before I can do that, I must shift contexts entirely. I have to wrap things up with the radio, then find my way to a record store, or go online and track down that CD.
Two things inevitably result from this gap. First, demand leaks from the system. However excited I am about the Beastie Boys this morning, it could be weeks before I’m next in a music store. By then I may only faintly recall that I was recently dying to buy something or other. As a result, I may walk out of the store with something that will thrill me less, or perhaps with nothing at all. Second, even very influential agents of demand generation have trouble getting a cut of the commerce flows they catalyze. A respected reviewer’s nod could help bring a film millions in ticket revenue. But no slice of that pie will find its way to the reviewer, the publisher, or the producer.
Interactive and highly auditable, the Internet is the first mass medium to bridge the disconnect that has long existed between the two sides of the demand coin.
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