The Attention Economy and How Media Works: Simple Truths for Marketers

by Karen Nelson-Field

This book offers a considered voice on the advertising chaos that colours our rapidly changing media environment in a world of fake news, fast facts and seriously depleted attention stamina. Rather than simply herald disruption, Karen Nelson-Field starts an intelligent conversation on what it will take for businesses to win in an attention economy, the advertising myths we need to leave behind and the scientific evidence we can use to navigate a complex advertising and media ecosystem. This book makes sense of viewability standards, coverage and clutter; it talks about the real quality behind a qCPM and takes a deep dive into the relationship between attention and sales. It explains the stark reality of human attention processing in advertising. Readers will learn how to maximise a viewer’s divided attention by leveraging specific media attributes and using attention-grabbing creative triggers. Nelson-Field asks you to pay attention to a disrupted advertising future without panic, but rather with a keen eye on the things that brand owners can learn to control.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business

168 pages, Hardcover

Published January 5, 2020

Reviews

[Puru Gupta · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have internalized HBG and binet+field principles, this is a natural extension to strengthen your principles. A must read for anyone working towards 'Digital advertising!

[CE Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for all marketers, building on the research from Sharp, Binet and Field

[Marcell Nimführ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Together with Byron sharp the most illuminating evidenced-based book on advertising. More please!

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought this was a pretty interesting book, and covers quite a lot of content. I'd probably recommend reading the likes of Byron Sharp, Peter Field, and Les Binet before tackling this book. I'd say this is less of an introduction to media and marketing, but for someone with a few years of experience.

I found the chapters on how advertising works, the evolution of media buying, the attention economy, and buying the best impression super insightful. More so the attention economy and buying the best impression. Quite new to my thinking, but worthwhile going away and looking into this area a bit more. It was great to hear the author's opinion on what the future good hold in regarding measuring quality impressions, through attention measurement.

It was also refreshing to hear a slight critique of the industry, from the murky waters of programmatic advertising to understanding that the internet is full of bot farms that take advantage of this non-transparent ecosystem.

If you've got a few years of media under your belt, give this book a shot. I'm sure you'll learn something new.