The Attention Merchants

The Attention Merchants Plot Summary

Introduction

Imagine walking through Times Square in the 1920s, your eyes bombarded by electric billboards, or sitting in your living room in the 1950s as television commercials interrupt your favorite show. These moments represent battles in a long war for your most precious resource: your attention. Throughout history, a special class of entrepreneurs has made fortunes not by selling products directly, but by harvesting human attention and reselling it to advertisers. Their story is one of remarkable innovation, cultural transformation, and recurring resistance. This historical journey reveals how our mental lives became industrialized commodities, traded in marketplaces most of us barely comprehend. From penny newspapers that first monetized eyeballs to social media platforms that track our every click, attention merchants have continuously refined their techniques for capturing our consciousness. Understanding this history illuminates not just media evolution but fundamental questions about human autonomy, social connection, and democracy itself. Whether you're concerned about digital distraction, interested in media economics, or simply curious about how your attention became so valuable to others, this exploration offers essential context for navigating our hyper-connected world.

Chapter 1: The Birth of Commercial Attention Harvesting (1830s-1920s)

The modern attention economy began with a simple business innovation in 1833. Benjamin Day, a young printer in New York City, launched a newspaper called the Sun at the unprecedented price of one penny, when competitors charged six cents. This wasn't merely a discount strategy; it represented a fundamental shift in media economics. Day wasn't primarily selling newspapers to readers; he was selling readers' attention to advertisers. By pricing his paper below production cost, he could attract a mass audience whose collective attention became a valuable commodity. The penny press revolution transformed journalism and public discourse. To attract maximum readership, these papers pioneered sensationalist reporting, featuring lurid crime stories, scandals, and human interest pieces rather than the commercial and political news that filled traditional papers. The New York Sun famously published the "Great Moon Hoax" of 1835, convincing readers that astronomers had discovered bat-winged humanoids living on the moon. This formula proved irresistible to the growing urban working class, and circulation soared. By 1837, the Sun and its competitor the New York Herald each sold over 20,000 copies daily, dwarfing the circulation of traditional papers. The late 19th century saw attention capture expand beyond newspapers into physical spaces. In Paris, artist Jules Chéret revolutionized advertising with vibrant, colorful posters that transformed city streets into commercial galleries. His eye-catching designs, often featuring beautiful women (known as "Chérettes") against bright backgrounds, made it nearly impossible for passersby to look away. The "poster craze" spread throughout Europe and America, establishing the principle that public spaces could be colonized for commercial attention capture. By the early 20th century, advertising had evolved from simple announcements to sophisticated psychological manipulation. Claude Hopkins, often considered the father of modern advertising, pioneered "scientific advertising" techniques that treated consumer persuasion as an engineering problem. His campaigns for products like Pepsodent toothpaste demonstrated how creating artificial needs could drive consumer behavior. Hopkins famously convinced Americans to brush their teeth daily by promoting the concept of "tooth film" - a naturally occurring membrane he reframed as a dangerous problem only Pepsodent could solve. The period also saw the first major backlash against commercial attention capture. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 emerged partly in response to misleading patent medicine advertisements that promised miraculous cures while delivering mainly alcohol and narcotics. Meanwhile, concerns about propaganda during World War I raised awareness about how mass persuasion could manipulate public opinion. Despite these concerns, by the 1920s, the attention merchant model had become firmly established, with radio broadcasting emerging as its newest and most powerful platform. This first era established the fundamental dynamics that would define media for the next century: the tension between capturing attention through entertainment and information, the economic pressures to sensationalize content, and the recurring pattern of public backlash when commercial interests pushed too far. The attention merchants had discovered that human attention was not just valuable - it was potentially the most valuable commodity in a modern economy.

Chapter 2: Psychological Advertising and War Propaganda (1914-1945)

The period between 1914 and 1945 witnessed the transformation of attention capture from a commercial art into a science of mass persuasion with profound implications for both business and politics. World War I marked the first systematic application of propaganda techniques to mobilize entire populations. When Britain entered the war in 1914 with only a small professional army, Lord Herbert Kitchener faced the unprecedented challenge of recruiting millions of volunteers. His solution was a nationwide propaganda campaign featuring the iconic "Your Country Needs YOU" poster showing Kitchener pointing directly at the viewer. This simple image proved remarkably effective, helping recruit over 2.5 million men and demonstrating how visual media could drive mass behavior. The American government developed these techniques even further upon entering the war in 1917. President Woodrow Wilson appointed journalist George Creel to head the Committee on Public Information, which Creel cheerfully described as "a plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world's greatest adventure in advertising." The committee produced 75 million pieces of literature, organized 75,000 "Four-Minute Men" to deliver patriotic speeches in movie theaters, and created films demonizing "the Hun." These efforts succeeded in transforming public opinion from neutrality to wartime fervor in a matter of months, revealing the extraordinary power of coordinated attention capture. Among those who took note of these wartime propaganda successes was Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, who had worked on the Creel Committee. After the war, Bernays became the self-proclaimed "father of public relations," arguing that "if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace." By this, he meant commercial interests could adopt the same techniques to influence mass behavior in peacetime. Bernays orchestrated famous campaigns like the 1929 "Torches of Freedom" march, where he arranged for attractive young women to smoke cigarettes during New York's Easter Parade, positioning Lucky Strike cigarettes as symbols of female emancipation rather than merely tobacco products. The interwar period saw advertising agencies incorporate these propaganda lessons, developing increasingly sophisticated psychological approaches. Agencies hired behaviorists like John B. Watson, who had famously conditioned a baby to fear white rats, to apply laboratory insights to consumer manipulation. Meanwhile, branding experts like Theodore MacManus created mythologies around products, transforming Cadillac from a mere automobile into a symbol of achievement and status. The goal was no longer just to inform consumers about products but to create emotional attachments and identities around brands. The rise of fascism in the 1930s demonstrated the darkest potential of attention control. Adolf Hitler understood mass psychology with frightening intuition, using radio, film, and massive rallies to create what one observer called a "community of ecstasy." The Nazi propaganda machine under Joseph Goebbels controlled every aspect of German media, distributing millions of cheap "People's Receivers" to ensure Nazi messages reached every home. During major speeches by Hitler, up to 70% of German households would be tuned in simultaneously - an unprecedented level of attention capture that Goebbels called "the towering herald of National Socialism." By 1945, the battle for attention had transformed both politics and commerce. The techniques pioneered during this period - psychological targeting, emotional appeals, and the strategic use of mass media - would become standard practice in peacetime advertising. More troublingly, this era revealed how vulnerable human attention could be to systematic capture and direction, raising fundamental questions about autonomy and democracy in an age of mass media. As attention merchants refined their methods in the post-war period, they would build upon these psychological insights to create even more powerful systems of influence.

Chapter 3: Broadcasting and the Conquest of Private Space (1950s-1960s)

The post-war decades witnessed television's emergence as the most powerful attention-capturing medium in history. The technology's adoption rate was unprecedented - from just 9% of American homes in 1950, television penetration reached 72% by 1956, with the average family watching nearly five hours daily. This new screen medium proved far more captivating than radio had been. As one woman described in 1950: "We ate our suppers in silence, spilling food, gaping in awe. We thought nothing of sitting in the darkness for hours at a stretch without exchanging a word." Television created an immersive experience previously available only in movie theaters, but now accessible in private homes around the clock. This period represented what might be called "peak attention" - the moment when more regular attention was paid to the same messages at the same time than ever before or since. With only three major networks, tens of millions of Americans watched the same programs every night, creating a shared national experience unprecedented in human history. Programs like "I Love Lucy" captured up to 71% of viewers, while Ed Sullivan's variety show reached its zenith with Elvis Presley's 1956 appearance, which attracted an astonishing 82.6% of the viewing audience - a record never equaled or surpassed. The economics of television advertising intensified the competition for ratings. NBC executive Pat Weaver introduced the "magazine format" with multiple commercial breaks per show, allowing networks to sell more advertising time. This innovation, quickly adopted by all networks, made audience attention even more valuable while fundamentally changing how programs were structured. Shows now needed to create suspense before commercial breaks to keep viewers watching. The networks also began measuring audiences more precisely through Nielsen ratings, which quantified exactly how many people were watching each program, allowing advertising to be priced accordingly. Television's conquest of domestic attention followed a careful strategy. Networks first colonized evening hours with entertainment like "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooner," then expanded into daytime with soap operas targeting housewives. These programs were designed as perfect vehicles for advertising, often integrating product mentions into storylines. The creation of "prime time" - the ritual of families gathering around the television at designated hours - established a pattern of collective attention that would define American culture for decades. As television critic Gilbert Seldes observed, "Television is the first means of entertainment that has ever been devised to appeal to everyone at the same time." The effectiveness of television advertising transformed consumer culture. Campaigns like the Marlboro Man transformed an obscure women's cigarette into a market leader within a year, while Crest toothpaste's "Look, Mom! No cavities!" ads helped it dominate the market in just four years. Television commercials demonstrated remarkable power to create and shape consumer desires, establishing what critic Raymond Williams called "the magic system" - a world where products promised not just utility but happiness, status, and identity. This period saw the full flowering of what would later be termed "consumer society," with television as its central organizing medium. By the mid-1960s, television had transformed American culture, creating unprecedented conformity through shared viewing experiences while also reshaping domestic life around the screen. Edward R. Murrow, who had helped build CBS News, lamented this development in his famous 1958 speech to broadcasters: "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends." Instead, he warned, television was insulating Americans from reality while selling them an endless stream of products and easy entertainment. This critique would help inspire the countercultural resistance that emerged in the following decade.

Chapter 4: Countercultural Resistance and Commercial Co-option (1960s-1970s)

By the mid-1960s, the first significant resistance to the attention merchants was brewing. The publication of Vance Packard's bestseller "The Hidden Persuaders" in 1957 had exposed advertising's psychological manipulation techniques, revealing how marketers studied and exploited unconscious desires. The 1958 quiz show scandals further eroded public trust in television when popular programs like "Twenty-One" were revealed to be rigged for maximum dramatic effect. These developments contributed to growing disillusionment with commercial media and its influence on American culture. This disenchantment found its fullest expression in the counterculture of the 1960s. In January 1967, former Harvard professor Timothy Leary addressed thousands at a "Human Be-In" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, introducing what would become the counterculture's defining slogan: "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out." Though often misinterpreted as merely advocating drug use, Leary's message was fundamentally about attention - a call to redirect consciousness away from mainstream media and commercial messages toward inner awareness and authentic experience. As he later explained, "Turn on" meant awakening to expanded consciousness, "tune in" meant harmonizing with natural rhythms and energies, and "drop out" meant detaching from involuntary or unconscious commitments. The counterculture sought to create alternative media and communities outside the commercial mainstream. Underground newspapers like the Berkeley Barb and East Village Other flourished, offering perspectives absent from mainstream publications. Communal living experiments attempted to create spaces free from commercial influence, while public broadcasting emerged as an institutional alternative to commercial television. Shows like "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" and "Sesame Street" demonstrated that television could educate rather than merely sell, establishing what one critic called "a zone of integrity" within the medium. However, the attention merchants proved remarkably adaptable to this challenge. In 1963, Pepsi executive Alan Pottasch developed a revolutionary approach to challenge Coca-Cola's market dominance. Rather than focusing on the product itself, Pepsi would focus on its consumers, positioning them as young, rebellious, and vibrant - "the Pepsi Generation." This strategy brilliantly co-opted the emerging youth culture, turning countercultural values into selling points. By 1969, Pepsi commercials featured flowing-haired youth in natural settings with music reminiscent of the Beatles, selling not just cola but a vision of liberation and authenticity. This commercial appropriation of countercultural values became the dominant pattern. As advertising executive Jerry Della Femina observed, "Madison Avenue is terrified of the revolution. That's why we're trying to buy it." Brands like Clairol hair color embraced feminist themes with slogans like "You're not getting older, you're getting better," while Virginia Slims cigarettes declared "You've come a long way, baby." Even blue jeans, once symbols of working-class authenticity, were transformed into designer fashion items selling for premium prices. The counterculture had inadvertently created new markets for "authentic" and "alternative" goods. By the mid-1970s, the hoped-for attentional revolution had largely failed. Despite all the rhetoric of "dropping out," most Americans never stopped watching television. The counterculture's values had been successfully commodified, while television viewing actually increased throughout the period. The attention merchants had weathered another revolt, demonstrating their remarkable ability to absorb and neutralize challenges to their fundamental business model. As media theorist Todd Gitlin later observed, "The counterculture's quarrel with television was not that it existed but that it wasn't countercultural enough" - a critique that commercial interests could accommodate without fundamental change.

Chapter 5: The Digital Revolution and New Frontiers (1990s-2010s)

The digital revolution that began in the 1990s transformed the attention economy in ways that previous media revolutions had only hinted at. The internet initially appeared to threaten traditional attention merchants by fragmenting audiences and empowering users. Unlike television viewers, internet users could actively choose what to engage with, seemingly breaking the broadcast model that had dominated for decades. Early internet culture celebrated this liberation with declarations like John Perry Barlow's 1996 "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," which told traditional authorities: "You have no sovereignty where we gather." This period of digital utopianism proved short-lived. By the late 1990s, new attention merchants had emerged who understood how to capture and monetize online attention. America Online (AOL) led the way, creating a walled garden of content designed to keep users within its advertising-supported ecosystem. The company's aggressive marketing strategy, distributing millions of installation CDs, helped it reach 30 million subscribers by 2000. Meanwhile, web portals like Yahoo attempted to become the "front door" to the internet, aggregating content and services to maximize user engagement and advertising exposure. Google, founded in 1998, developed a revolutionary business model based on search advertising - showing relevant ads alongside search results. This approach seemed less intrusive than traditional advertising while being more precisely targeted. When founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin introduced AdWords in 2000, they created a system that matched advertisements to user searches with remarkable precision. This solved the fundamental problem that had plagued advertising for a century: how to avoid wasting impressions on uninterested consumers. By 2004, Google was generating billions in advertising revenue while maintaining the appearance of an objective information utility. The economics of digital attention created new dynamics. Unlike broadcast television, which had limited channels and time slots, the internet offered unlimited content. This abundance created what economist Herbert Simon had predicted decades earlier: "In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients." In this environment, platforms competed fiercely to capture and retain user attention through increasingly sophisticated techniques. The smartphone revolution, beginning with the iPhone in 2007, extended the reach of attention merchants into every moment of daily life. The average American soon spent over three hours daily on mobile devices, creating what researchers called "continuous partial attention" - a fragmented cognitive state where attention constantly shifts between multiple inputs. Apps like Instagram (acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012) transformed personal moments into opportunities for attention harvesting, while "clickbait" content farms like BuzzFeed optimized content specifically to trigger emotional responses that drove sharing. By the 2010s, the consequences of this new attention economy were becoming apparent. Studies showed declining attention spans, increased anxiety, and growing public concern about digital addiction. Even some technology pioneers expressed regret about their creations - former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris warned that technology was "hijacking our minds," while Facebook investor Sean Parker admitted the platform was designed to exploit "a vulnerability in human psychology." These concerns sparked a new wave of resistance, including digital wellness movements and regulatory efforts to limit data collection and targeting. Yet the fundamental business model of the attention merchants remained intact, now operating at a scale and level of sophistication that their early 20th-century predecessors could hardly have imagined.

Chapter 6: Social Media's Rise: Platforms of Persuasion

Social media represents perhaps the most sophisticated evolution of the attention merchant model, combining unprecedented scale with psychological precision. Facebook, launched by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard in 2004, initially spread through college campuses as an exclusive social network. Its early appeal stemmed from its ability to digitize existing social connections while enhancing them with features like profiles, friend counts, and status updates. As one Stanford student explained in 2004, "Nothing validates your social existence like the knowledge that someone else has approved you or is asking for your permission to list them as a friend." Facebook cleverly positioned itself as the digital extension of real-world social life rather than an alternative to it. The platform's fundamental innovation was transforming social connection itself into an attention-capturing mechanism. By 2006, Facebook had introduced the News Feed, which aggregated friends' activities into a constantly updating stream. This feature initially provoked user backlash but quickly became the platform's centerpiece, establishing a pattern where users returned multiple times daily to check for updates. The introduction of the "Like" button in 2009 further enhanced this dynamic, creating a simple feedback mechanism that triggered dopamine releases and encouraged continued engagement. These features weren't merely popular; they were designed based on principles of behavioral psychology to maximize what Facebook called "time on site." Twitter, launched in 2006, introduced a different social dynamic with its 140-character limit and public following system. What began as a simple status update service evolved into a powerful tool for broadcasting thoughts, links, and reactions to current events. The platform's follower counts created a precise metric for what media theorist Rex Sorgatz termed "microfame" - a new category of recognition below traditional celebrity but above complete anonymity. This quantification of social influence became a powerful status marker in many professional and social circles, driving users to compete for followers and engagement. The business model underlying these platforms represented a significant evolution in attention capture. Unlike traditional media, social platforms collected unprecedented amounts of personal data, enabling what Facebook called "nanotargeting" - the ability to reach specific demographic and psychographic segments with remarkable precision. This surveillance infrastructure allowed advertisers to target users based not just on demographics but on interests, behaviors, and even emotional states. As Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth candidly explained in an internal memo, "The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good." The rise of social media coincided with the decline of blogging and other early forms of user-generated content. The relative ease of posting on platforms like Facebook and Twitter compared to maintaining a blog led many creators to abandon independent publishing. As Wired magazine advised in 2008: "The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge... The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter." This migration concentrated attention on platforms controlled by a handful of companies, further centralizing the attention economy. By the mid-2010s, social media had transformed from novel communication tools into attention infrastructure, fundamentally altering how information spread, how influence operated, and how people experienced social connection. The average American spent 50 minutes daily on Facebook alone by 2016, time largely diverted from face-to-face interactions rather than other media consumption. This shift represented what sociologist Sherry Turkle called "being alone together" - physically present but mentally elsewhere, attention captured by distant social connections mediated through corporate platforms. The social media revolution had succeeded in monetizing the most fundamental human need - connection with others - by transforming it into an industrial-scale attention harvesting operation.

Chapter 7: The Attention Revolution: From Capture to Liberation

The 2010s witnessed growing awareness of and resistance to the attention economy's negative effects. As smartphones proliferated and social media platforms refined their engagement techniques, many users began experiencing what psychologist Adam Alter called "behavioral addiction" - compulsive checking, scrolling, and posting that interfered with daily life. Studies linked heavy social media use with increased anxiety, depression, and loneliness, particularly among younger users. This growing discomfort sparked what might be called an attention revolution - a multifaceted movement to reclaim control over individual and collective attention. Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, emerged as a leading critic of what he termed "human downgrading" - the systematic exploitation of psychological vulnerabilities by technology companies. In 2016, Harris founded the Center for Humane Technology, arguing that platforms were engaged in a "race to the bottom of the brain stem" to capture attention through increasingly manipulative techniques. His insider perspective lent credibility to concerns that had previously been dismissed as technophobia or moral panic. As Harris explained, "Never before in history have the decisions of a handful of designers working at three companies had so much impact on how millions of people around the world spend their attention." The attention revolution manifested in various forms of resistance and adaptation. Digital minimalism, a philosophy advocated by computer scientist Cal Newport, promoted selective and intentional technology use. Apps and browser extensions designed to block distractions proliferated, with millions downloading tools like Freedom, Forest, and StayFocusd. Some users adopted more radical approaches, including "digital sabbaths" or complete departures from social media platforms. Author Jenny Odell articulated this resistance in her 2019 book "How to Do Nothing," arguing that "to pay attention to one thing is to resist paying attention to other things; it is to hold certain things at bay, to create a space into which certain things may enter." Institutional responses also emerged. Apple and Google introduced screen time management features in their operating systems, allowing users to monitor and limit app usage. Some schools and workplaces implemented "device-free" policies for certain periods or spaces. France passed a "right to disconnect" law in 2017, giving workers legal protection from after-hours work communications. These measures represented attempts to establish boundaries around digital attention capture, recognizing that individual willpower was insufficient against systems designed by teams of engineers and psychologists to maximize engagement. Alternative business models began gaining traction as users sought escape from advertising-driven platforms. Subscription services like Netflix and Spotify offered ad-free experiences, while platforms like Patreon enabled direct financial relationships between creators and audiences. These models suggested possibilities for media ecosystems not dependent on attention harvesting and resale. As technology writer Kevin Kelly observed, "When people pay directly, they can get what they want. When they pay indirectly, they get what advertisers want them to want." The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated both digital dependence and digital questioning. As remote work and social distancing forced more activities online, screen time reached unprecedented levels. Yet this very immersion prompted deeper reflection on digital well-being. Zoom fatigue became a recognized phenomenon, while many reported feeling overwhelmed by constant connectivity. This tension between necessity and exhaustion created new openings for reconsidering our relationship with attention-capturing technologies. The attention revolution remains ongoing and unresolved. While awareness has grown significantly, the fundamental business models of the attention economy continue to dominate. Social media platforms have made cosmetic changes while maintaining their core attention-harvesting functions. Yet the emergence of a vocabulary and framework for understanding attention capture represents significant progress. As media theorist Douglas Rushkoff argues, "Once you name something, you can see it. Once you see it, you can talk about it. Once you talk about it, you can change it." The future of the attention economy may depend on whether this growing consciousness can translate into sustainable alternatives to the attention merchant model that has dominated media for nearly two centuries.

Summary

Throughout history, the attention economy has evolved through distinct phases, each representing a shift in how human attention is captured, valued, and monetized. From the penny press of the 1830s through radio, television, and digital media, we've witnessed a consistent pattern: new technologies emerge that gather unprecedented amounts of attention, followed by the development of business models to commercialize that attention, culminating in public resistance and adaptation. This cycle has accelerated with each technological revolution, with digital platforms achieving attention capture at scales and intensities previously unimaginable. The fundamental tension driving this history is between attention's economic value and its personal significance. Attention merchants have consistently developed more sophisticated techniques to harvest and monetize our mental focus, while individuals have sought to protect what psychologist William James called "the very root of judgment, character, and will." This struggle continues today as we navigate an environment engineered to maximize engagement rather than well-being. The lessons of this history suggest that reclaiming attention requires both individual practices and collective action - developing personal boundaries around technology use while also demanding ethical design and alternative business models that respect attention's true value. As we move forward, our relationship with attention-capturing technologies will likely determine not just our media consumption but the very nature of our social connections, political discourse, and inner lives.

About Author

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Tim Wu

Tim Wu is an author, a professor at Columbia Law School, and a contributing writer for the New York Times.. He has written about technology in numerous publications, and coined the phrase "net neutrality."

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