This blog post explores the evolution of the "attention economy" from the influential TV commercials of the 1960s to today's digital age, where crypto and AI are reshaping how attention is captured and monetized, transforming cultural and economic interactions.
I am currently rewatching old seasons of Mad Men, a TV series based in the 1960s that follows a prestigious ad agency in New York and the “ad men” of Madison Avenue.
These ad agencies captured the attention of broad swathes of the US population and converted them into religiously paying customers for things like cars, cigarettes, beauty products, electronics, airline tickets, alcohol, and frozen foods.
The ad men did this by crafting compelling brand narratives and establishing unique selling propositions via TV commercials, print ads, and radio spots, creating impactful ads that often become part of popular culture:
De Beers – “A Diamond is Forever” (1947)
Marlboro – “Marlboro Man” (1954)
Coca-Cola – “It’s the Real Thing” (1969)
McDonald’s – "You Deserve a Break Today" (1971)
Nike – "Just Do It" (1988)
The 1960s marked an inflection point in history. The adoption of TV and radio enabled a relatively small group of people to quickly and easily capture the attention of millions in the pursuit of profit. In the process, they were able to disseminate ideas (i.e. memes) and create culture throughout the entire population and nation.
This was the early attention economy, and since the 1960s, it has only strengthened and become more global in nature; after the TV came personal computers and cameras (80s), the internet and web browsers (90s), social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter (2000s), smartphones and app stores (late 2000s / early 2010s).
I believe we are currently at another inflection point in the attention economy because of crypto and AI. There is no coincidence that the research paper by Google in 2017, which helped birth LLMs and multimodal generative AI, was titled “Attention Is All You Need” 😉
I am currently thinking through what this inflection is and, in this blog post, unpack raw thoughts.
In the 1960s, capturing and retaining attention through advertising helped large companies sell more goods and services, often at higher margins. This resulted in higher stock prices due to traditional valuation methods like a DCF.
In the 2010s, capturing and retaining attention helped content creators and influencers build income streams through subscriptions, sponsorships, affiliate marketing, merchandising, licensing, and digital products.
Seeing how greater attention yields greater value in the examples above feels intuitive.
Perhaps less intuitive is seeing how greater attention, when combined with social consensus, can result in esoteric goods like sneakers, sports collectibles, vintage furniture, and children’s trading cards being exchanged for hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars in some cases. You may have a tough time running a DCF on the PSA 10 first edition shadowless holographic Charizard Pokémon card to justify its $420,000 price tag!
Some may recognize this as “brand” or “cultural capital.” For the purposes of this blog post, I will refer to it as the “attention premium.”
In recent years, and in large part due to the internet, this “attention premium” has bled over to traditional markets. Assets like Tesla, GameStop, and AMC, formerly valued via an analysis of their cashflows, began to derive a significant portion of their value from the attention they received.
Crypto has taken this trend toward financializing attention to a new level. The role of crypto is simple: 1/ it enables anyone to quickly create new assets, 2/ it enables anyone to trade assets. This works because crypto is permissionless (anyone can issue assets of any kind) and composable (anyone can trade those assets on any venue).
This has led to the creation of millions of new crypto assets over the last few years. Many of these assets represent an idea (i.e. a meme) that others can invest in, and benefit from a financial system with billions of dollars of daily liquidity that anyone can access.
These assets—memecoins, NFTs, and tokens—can be considered “attention assets,” which measure and capture the amount and value of attention in real-time. The scale of this asset class should not be dismissed; the total memecoin market cap is $50B, Dogecoin hit a market cap of $85B, CryptoPunk #5822 sold for $24M, and our team at Seed Club launched a memecoin called $enjoy, which hit an $80M market cap after 30 days.
Money is a language; when people buy these assets, they communicate their belief in a particular idea. In this world, attention is the primary driver of value, and crypto enables individuals to profit based on their ability to correctly identify which assets, creators, or content will attract more attention.
Meanwhile, AI’s role in generating and curating content personalized to unimaginable precision means that capturing and monetizing attention will become an increasingly automated and sophisticated practice. Nevertheless, generative AI will democratize content creation, making it easier for anyone to join the arena and try to monetize their ideas.
While the role of AI agents in this is still unclear to me, I sense that the symbiosis of crypto and AI will lead to a new kind of market, one that is permissionless, decentralized, and driven by data and attention in equal measure. Gone are the days when Mad Men’s Don Draper and his team of copywriters and art directors were the sole arbiters of financialized memes, taking months to produce and roll out an ad to niche groups of US consumers.
I am still forming my thoughts on this. I’d love to hear any of your ideas about the future of the attention economy and how you see AI and crypto shaping cultural and economic interactions – please reach me on Twitter or Warpcast.
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