Rise of the Attention Economy: Why marketers are rethinking metrics, media and creativity

The rules of marketing are being rewritten in real time. In a world of fragmented platforms and fleeting user focus, traditional media metrics like reach and impressions are rapidly losing relevance. In their place, a new gold standard is emerging: attention.

Read more: 'Creative agencies will be in trouble': Maruti’s Partho Banerjee on the battle for Gen Z attention

Read more: Raj Grover, Shibani Bedi, Ankush Bahuguna: Creators debate long-form vs short-form content

At a recent panel on Media Dialogues With Storyboard18, Delshad Irani sat down with marketing leaders from Maruti Suzuki, WPP Media, Snap India, and Lumen to unpack what the shift toward attention-based planning means for advertisers, agencies and platforms - and what it will take to truly earn the consumer’s time.

From Impressions to Impact

“The first thing that I think we have to remember is that the insights behind attention are not new,” said Mike Follett, CEO of Lumen. “We have always known that people are quite good at ignoring advertising… just because something is viewable doesn’t mean that it gets looked at, or looked at for very long.”

Follett’s firm recently conducted a study in India where 3,000 people downloaded eye-tracking software to determine what content actually captures attention. One staggering result: “70% of viewable impressions are not seen by consumers,” noted Pulkit Trivedi, MD of Snap India.

Given billions spent annually on ads, the implications are profound. “It is time that we start indexing on very important metrics like attention,” Trivedi added.

Gen Z: The Elusive Consumer

India’s vast and growing Gen Z population - numbering 380 million - is central to this conversation.

“Younger people have this amazing, special skill, this superpower to avoid advertising,” Follett explained. “And India is one of the most exciting countries in the world because of this enormous Gen Z cohort.”

Partho Banerjee, Head of Marketing and Sales at Maruti Suzuki, echoed the challenge: “Today, the key challenge is to earn the genuine attention of the Gen Z customers. Not easy.”

Banerjee emphasized the importance of storytelling and experience-led campaigns to connect with younger audiences.

“We feel that Gen Z customer, there are two ways by which we can connect. One is to have a very powerful narrative which connects with them. And second is to tell about the experiences… they are very much in search of the experiences which they can really look forward to.”

“When I interact with them, I find that they are talking about some new things… and they are always looking for something new and some new experiences.”

Creative Agencies: Under Pressure

This new media environment has raised the bar for creative agencies. “Creative agencies are going to be under pressure,” said Banerjee. “Because now we’ll have data that shows whether their creative is actually working. If studies reveal that an ad fails to cut through in the first three seconds, it’s going to be a serious problem for them.”

He added: “Unfortunately, many creative agencies still take a one-size-fits-all approach. That’s a big issue in today’s fragmented media landscape.”

The marketers urged a shift toward platform-specific creativity based on consumer behavior and context: “We need to understand the different platforms, how the media is consumed there and how we are going to convey the message.”

Platforms: Designing for Attention

From a platform perspective, Snap is building features that natively encourage attention.

“Snapchat opens to the camera, it doesn’t open to a feed where you are endlessly doomscrolling,” said Trivedi. “We are the only platform that allows multi-format advertising… the advertising format gets much more immersive and engaging.”

He added: “The brands get a chance to expose themselves to users in a more engaging way… and the fact that AR is a lean-in experience—creativity comes to the forefront.”

Agencies: A New Planning Paradigm

On the agency side, WPP’s Amin Lakhani confirmed that attention metrics are already influencing media plans:

“What we've done is that we've already integrated these learnings into a planning platform… Not only in India but globally.”

“As you know, India… doesn’t have a single-source equivalent measurement or industry-recognized measurement system yet in digital. And as an industry, a lot more needs to be done in that direction.”

WPP, he said, is already seeing interest from leading advertisers: “Clients like Domino’s, Britannia, and Aditya Birla Fashion… they’ve been at the forefront of getting on to this.”

Rethinking Short vs. Long

While the attention economy is often equated with short-form content, panelists were quick to note that brevity is not the enemy of depth.

“It doesn’t mean that Gen Z is not going to see the longer format of the content,” Banerjee said. “Important thing is how you are going to build the story… and is it something which is relatable to them?”

Follett agreed: “We always think that people have short attention spans… but short can work, especially if you repeat that time and again. Repetition is a good thing to aid memory.”

A New Advertising Era

As advertisers wake up to the reality that impressions don’t equal attention, a larger industry transformation is underway. Metrics are evolving. Media strategies are shifting. And creative work is being held to a higher standard - one that’s defined not by length or reach, but by connection.

Or as Banerjee put it: “How well we are going to make the content and make it relatable to the audience is going to make the difference.”

Watch: From Virality To Viability: Creators decode the future of content and commerce