Ex-News Corp exec unveils an 'attention economy' holding company, plans shake-up of clickbait, vanity metrics

Industry Contributor 19 Aug 2019 - 2 min read

Ex-News Corp exec unveils an 'attention economy' holding company, plans shake-up of clickbait, vanity metrics

By Professor Karen Nelson-Field - University of Adelaide, Centre For Amplified Intelligence

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Tags: advertising, metrics, attention economy, Joe Marchese

In an industry filled with (poor) proxies of consumer attention, a new holding company has launched in the US to bring together technologies and businesses that can actually measure the real thing. CEO and co-founder of Attention Capital, Joe Marchese, hopes to boost an attention economy that values real human attention rather than clickbait, fraud and vanity measures (Marchese Attention Capital announcement).

Key points

Big advertisers have expressed dissatisfaction with how digital media has changed the rules of the game; audience measurement of significant growing concern
Marchese is a former president of ad revenue Fox Networks and co-founder of trueX media Inc
Firm hopes to raise between $400 million and $500 million to fund the next generation of media and technology companies who properly measure and value human attention
Founders believe audiences are fed-up with what media delivers them and seek to allocate precious attention to better things

We have definitely moved from simply thinking about the attention economy to a place of action. And the industry is starting to feel optimistic again. Optimistic that incomparable, impure and watered-down impressions, may one day again be credible and real.

Credible currencies are starting to form, the nature of measurement is becoming more advanced, marketers are starting to rise up and take notice, capital investment is starting to flow and the study the of attention is a growing field. This is an exciting time to be a marketer and an attention researcher.

But new economies - and new currencies - take time to establish and they require a unified approach. The next ten years will bring about significant change and businesses that nurture meaningless audience metrics, undervalue quality content and foster antitrust will lose.

Human, viewable, accurate and independent measurement is what the market is asking for - Marchese’s announcement will expedite movement towards this True North.