Early advertising converted human attention into cash by creating demand

Evidence

Claude C. Hopkins was perhaps an unlikely figure to revolutionize the business of harvesting and using human attention, but that is what he did in the early twentieth century, when he became one of advertising’s greatest innovators. Still in its infancy, this new form of communication was, as we have said, the means by which attention could be converted into cash, for Hopkins was a particular master of the art of using attention to create demand for new products. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 76

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines advertising as the mechanism converting attention into cash — central concept for the whole book’s thesis.
• XREF: connects to: Advertisers converted hippie desires into consumer demand in peak acquisitive years. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 565; The first consumer online services were conceived as attention-reselling advertising platforms. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 703; Advertising industrialized attention by converting it into a resellable commodity — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Advertising converted attention into revenue by selling consumers a receding ideal #expands (0.92) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 225