Paying (for) Attention

It is fashionable nowadays to talk about personal attention as a commodity or even a currency. But attention is neither: it can be bought and sold, to some extent, but it cannot be traded to third parties, and it is not entirely fungible.

ZURICH – It is fashionable nowadays to talk about personal attention as a commodity or even a currency. Many companies are looking for ways to automate the act of “paying attention” to individual customers on a grand scale, even as many of them also confuse attention with intention (to buy). Indeed, “attention” is becoming more interesting now that the Internet makes it easier to measure it.

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