Peak Attention Competing in a Saturated Attention Economy

The 20,000 Foot View:  Smartphones have made media consumption more interconnected than ever and are still increasing audiences time spent with entertainment. Filling the residual audience downtime from the analogue era was the fuel in the engine of the digital content economy. Now, however, the attention economy has peaked, with the majority of that downtime addressed. Future attention growth is becoming zero sum, with time gained most often at the expense of time spent elsewhere. In this report MIDiA maps entertainment consumption across all formats in our unique Attention Model, tracking a dozen entertainment behaviours across            markets.

Key Insights

• The filling            audience downtime fuelled the digital            economy, but now the attention            is entering a new phase:           
• Attention growth            peaked: just            of the total            entertainment hours available remain unaddressed
• Video dominates            across traditional and digital media,            for            of all entertainment time
• Audio is            at            with radio the major            despite a steady decline across            developed markets
• Social media,            biggest digital contributor at            has            consumer behaviour rather than transitioning            antecedents
• Despite the            of audio streaming, its contribution            overall entertainment time is small           
• Streaming video            is mainstream, with a combined            of            million across the surveyed            compared to            million for streaming           
• Games is            major format, accounting for            of            time 
• News and            readers average just            hours across            adult population, despite having the            audience            million)
• Due to            abundance, attention is becoming devalued            sentiment is the next engagement            that needs to be added            the measurement mix
• The commodification            user experience will no longer            – user experiences must become            of bold, unique brand identities 

Companies and brands mentioned in this report:  Amazon, Amazon Music, Amazon Prime Video, Angry Birds, AOL, Apple, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga, Discovery Networks, Disney, Disney+, Facebook Fortnite, Fortnite World Cup, Google, HBO, Hulu, Instagram, NBC, Netflix, Snapchat, Spotify, TikTok, Warner Media, WeChat, Yahoo, YouTube

Note: A detailed Attention Model dataset is published alongside this report with data for            entertainment activities for            markets, including audience size, average time spent, total time spent and attention share.