Who controls attention once it becomes a currency?
Attention becomes a scarce, tradable currency that firms and campaigns price, package, and redirect through algorithmic amplification and audience segmentation, wearing down individual autonomy.
Hypotheses.
What the paper argues, written so it can be tested.
- H1
As information volume rises, the minimum signal strength needed to be noticed rises faster than people’s capacity to process it.
- H2
The price of attention follows consumer value, platform sophistication, focus, and intent, and campaigns that cross the gate early hold attention longer.
The model.
The perceptual gate: the threshold a message must cross to be noticed. Above it, attention turns into revenue; the space between the gate and what people can process is the cost of being noticed.
More than anyone can read.
Photo: Chris YangPartial abstract.
As content grows, the signal strength needed to be noticed rises faster than people’s capacity to process it. The paper models attention as a nonmonetary good that turns into profit once a message crosses a perceptual gate, and extends the model to political campaigns.
Attention Economy in Advertisement and Political Campaigns
Key sources
- Tversky, A., and Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability.
- Ahuja, K., et al. (2025). The attention equation. McKinsey and Company.
- Broockman, D. E., and Kalla, J. L. When and why campaigns persuade voters.
How we’ll test it.
No results yet. This is the plan: the data, the measure, and what would count as support.
The data
Exposure and engagement for ads and campaign messages at different levels of feed volume, with what each placement cost.
The measure
The signal strength at which a message is first noticed, and price per hour viewed against value, sophistication, focus, and intent.
What would count as support
A noticing threshold that climbs faster than processing capacity, and a pricing formula that predicts observed prices.
How it connects to Pulp.
Pulp’s attention research: what noise costs people, and who pays.
Continues as a special project: Attention economics
Also in Attention
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