Business models now give goods away free in exchange for user attention.

Evidence

On the one hand, our searches – our interests, our questions, our clicking choices, the links that we establish or activate – give substance to Google’s marvellous intelligence, whose algorithm would be but an empty shell if we did not continually fill it up with our collective intelligence. Google lives off our active and reactive attention, which continually nourish and refine the effectiveness of the formal apparatus put at our disposal. On the other hand, Google tends increasingly to sell our attention, our needs to know and our search choices, to advertisers that the firm allows to short-circuit the effects of our common intelligence: if they appear at the top of the page, it is not (only) by virtue of their relevance, substantiated by our multiple clicks, but because they have paid millions of dollars for increased visibility regardless of our collective intelligence, which would place them much lower if it were allowed to organize itself freely. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43 (#expands, via linked claim)

YouTube, now a Google subsidiary, offers perhaps the starkest example of the change. Once entirely ad-free, by the mid-2010s many of its videos required users to watch a fifteen or thirty-second commercial to see a few minutes of content, making television’s terms look almost respectful by comparison. That priceless impression of getting great stuff for free, the attention merchant’s most essential magic trick, was losing its charm. As with any bit of legerdemain, once the actual workings are revealed, the strings made visible, it becomes ugly and obvious, drained of its power to enchant. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1087 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The attention merchant model’s magic is delivering real value that seems free — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 892; Free digital services are paid for by users’ attention.; Platform profits come from harvesting user attention and selling it back to advertisers — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Free digital services are paid for by users’ attention. #corroborates (0.95)
• Platform profits come from harvesting user attention and selling it back to advertisers #expands (0.90) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43
• YouTube’s shift to pre-roll ads revealed the free-lunch trick of attention merchants #exemplifies (0.90) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1087
• The attention merchant model’s magic is delivering real value that seems free #expands (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 892
• AOL pivoted from ad-free service to monetizing its user base as an attention merchant #exemplifies (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 727
• Attention merchants profit by colonizing previously uncommercialized spaces of awareness. #expands (0.82) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 17
• Advertising converted attention into revenue by selling consumers a receding ideal #expands (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 225
• Attention functions as convertible capital that individuals and institutions can bank and trade #expands (0.78) — Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net, 14
• Commercial exploitation of idle attention is a recent development #qualifies (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 65