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The Attention Rights Movement

I have written a piece on the emergence of an Attention Rights movement over on Nicole Ferraro's terrific microsite, InternetEvolution. Check it out and join the global conversation.

As marketers and advertisers hungrily explore ways to monetize online attention, they face mounting challenges. Consumers have migrated online precisely because they want more control over the media they consume. The old bargain -- content for attention -- is broken. Empowered viewers now reject TV’s standard promise of 22 minutes of content in exchange for eight minutes of brain-dead ads. With place- and time-shifting technology at their disposal, viewers, listeners, and readers do not want, nor need they endure, advertisements. As a result, online ads, be they behavioral, contextual, or declarative data-based, are all falling short. Give consumers the choice, and they would rather get information from a trusted friend or expert. This is giving the old Hollywood/Madison Avenue nexus fits. The ROI on a dollar of integrated advertising today, even when measurable, is dismal.

As a Concept, Prime Time Television is Dead

According to a recently released Digital Life America tracking study conducted by Solutions Research Group, nearly 80 million Americans (43 percent of the online population) have watched one of their favorite TV shows on the Internet, up significantly from 12 months ago when that figure was just 25 percent. One out of five Americans online said they watch TV on the web on a weekly basis, and that's not including the 14 percent who say they use cable's video-on-demand option.

From MediaPost Communications:

Those who viewed one of the leading 20 prime time shows in the past 24 hours were asked to identify the source of viewing. Overall, 25 percent of prime time viewing was time shifted using a DVR, broadband, mobile or similar. Among viewers 18-34, one-third (34 percent) of viewing was time-shifted. And among 18-49 households with a DVR, a remarkable 55 percent of the leading 20 shows were time-shifted.

If a household has a DVR and broadband, DVR is the preferred means of time-shifting. DVR users are becoming more aggressive in skipping commercials-65 percent say they "always" skip commercials compared to 52 percent a year ago.

Oscar's Weak Showing Speaks Volumes About State of TV, Movies

Jump points throughout history bring big change, but arrive in small doses. The trick is to watch the trend lines.

If we read the writing on the wall from two very fresh data points on popular media, TV and movies as we know them are in for a rough transition.

Point 1.

The overnight results announced today by Nielsen Media Research says preliminary ratings for the 80th annual Academy Awards telecast are 14 percent lower than the least-watched ceremony ever. In other words, TV that celebrates cinema is apparently a dud with viewers who would rather use their attention in new ways.

Point 2.

Meanwhile, a report from tech and media consultancy IDG issued a few days ago says that the Internet is where people spend the most time browsing--32.7 hours per week.

Results are based on a sample of 992 U.S. residents 15 years of age or older, who frequently use the Internet, including quotas by gender, age group, ethnicity, region, and income.

The firm says people spend 70.6 hours per week on average with all media. They spend 16.4 hours glued to television and 3.9 hours with newspapers and magazines.

Karsten Weide, the study's program director of digital media and entertainment, confirms what the ad media market has been doing for the past few years, as broadband Internet access has mostly supplanted narrower conduits making the Web a video medium. "This suggests that advertising budgets will continue to be shifted out of television, newspapers, and magazines into Internet advertising."

There is growing evidence that the old exchange of content for attention is changing and the resulting tsunami could wipe out those players who fail to pay heed to the trend lines. That means you Hollywood.

Maybe next year's Academy Awards celebration should be webcast instead.

Trust is the New Money (Part 4)

"Stupid people, you don't use a secure password."

The was the note left behind by a hacker on the Harvard University website Monday as a compressed 125 MB file described as the database for the Web site of Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences showed up on the Bit Torrent index, Pirate Bay. Apparently a lot of personal information about students was exposed. The hacker claims the stunt was intended to show the university's Crimson-faced IT department just how vulnerable they are. Not too often the Harvard folks get called stupid. Just another warning of the threats that come with the opportunities after the Jump Point -- and the obligations we all have to preserve trust as the coin of the new realm.

The post-Jump Point world will be populated by numerous scammers---so-called seeders and leechers, employing malware, adware, spam and spear-phishing to get the unguarded to give up valuable information. And nowhere is the new network more vulnerable than inside the social media sites that have emerged as the new market spaces. MySpace, Facebook, bebo, Hi-5, and the myriad communities like them are very attractive consolidations of consumers but they are also porous, unregulated frontier towns. And, frontier justice can be a bitch.

A warning today from an InfoWorld item:

"Companies need to adjust their security policies for Web 2.0 world today, they need to tailor their Internet use policies and create rules that include social Web sites, blogs, and all the other types of sites being created out there, the usage policies need to be spelled out specifically and enforced," said Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at network gateway maker Secure Computing.

"Beyond that they need technical safeguards to back those policies, but the outlook for all this is still pretty grim," he said. "Most companies are barely providing sufficient protection in the context of Web 1.0."

The bottom line: After the Jump Point, three billion people will buy, sell, trade and exchange with each other directly--no government, middlemen or arbiters between them. And, they will do so, most of them, without ever coming face-to-face. Three billion strangers operating on one thing: trust. There are two sides to that coin. Be trustworthy, in fact be the most trusted source in your industry or segment. Make bank on trust. But you also have to be guarded and responsible stewards of trust. Don't be vulnerable and hackable. Remember old Ron Reagan's favorite Russian proverb, "doveryai, no proveryai." Trust but verify.

Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business

Today my new book, Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business, officially launches.

Jump Point is a book about change, particularly the sweeping changes our world will undergo in the next 1000 days. The book t ells the story of how our lives will be forever altered when the world is finally united in a single economic system: the Networked Economy. At the current rate of technology adoption, that historic event—the Jump Point--is expected to take place sometime before 2011.

After the Jump Point, three billion people—the world’s entire workforce-- will be able to connect—buy, sell and trade—with each other unimpeded by intermediaries, regulators or arbiters. In this new world, individuals trump institutions, old school scarcity economics is replaced with the new school network economics, and everything about the way we live, work and play will change.

The book is not about technology per se, but rather the social, political and cultural changes technology is rendering on the world. I see it as an adventure story.

One obvious change will be the mass influx of billions of new consumers and producers into the global mainstream. Many of these people will have been thrust into the modern global economy straight out of medieval times. For many, connection to the networked economy will be by the first piece of technology—probably a web-enabled mobile phone—they have ever used. That means the world market will soon be influenced by many new and strange demands and wants by consumers who are more likely to have eaten bat meat than a Big Mac.

Another big change will be the size of the economic pie. It will get much larger, as two billion more people contribute to the creation of wealth. The result will be a massive global marketplace of a scale we have never known before. The era will welcome our first million employee company, our first trillion-dollar company. And the world’s richest person? It will not be Bill Gates or any other American.

I hope you will not only pick up a copy of Jump Point and read it, I look forward to having an ongoing conversation--debate even--with you about the changes the next thousand days will bring us.

Yahoo Should Join Forces with Google to Defeat Microsoft

My message to Yahoo: Do No Evil Empire.

Okay, maybe it's a Silicon Valley thing, but for all the durm und strang surrounding the Microsoft seizure of Yahoo, has anyone fully thought about the unpleasant implications of a world where MFST rules the Net? For the press, the deal points are all the rage, along with he drama and the desperation (Yang eschews Ballmer for Murdoch?), but the ballyhoo has permitted a false premise to take hold. The rationale for the acquisition is that Microsoft needs Yahoo to protect itself from Google. Hell, after that, who is going to protect us from Microsoft? Fight on little friend, fight on. Maybe Yahoo and Google could Think Different and come up with an alternative scheme to save the world from the jack boots. Stranger things have happened.

Worst Super Bowl Ads Ever Constitute Attention Theft

My attention was stolen on Sunday and I can never get those lost moments back.  And I am riled up. 

Sorry, but that is how I feel about this year's crop of of anemic Super Bowl Ads.  I, like 100 million other people, allowed my attention to what I really cared about --the Game--to be hijacked every few minutes by mostly boring, often amateurish schlock.  After every change of ball possession, every injury, every time out, we viewers were assaulted with a parade of pathetic pitches--including wrap-arounds, embedded graphics and sponsorships.  What made it worse, is that I had high expectations that this annual display of what is supposed to be our best commercial videos would actually be entertaining, and therefore worth my attention.  It was not.  Computer-generated forest animals, talking babies and a sophomoric send-up with Carmen Electra?  That is the best Madison Avenue can do for $3 million a pop? 

As the worst year for overall ad quality in modern memory, this year's Big Game fallout gives us all a chance to reconsider the sanctity of our attention.  After my family, my attention--my capacity to receive new information--is the most precious thing in my busy life.  What advertisers did on Sunday was steal from me--and you.  And, the problem is bigger than the Super Bowl.  Look around.  Every time you are confronted with unwanted ads and misplaced messages, someone is trying to steal your attention for their benefit.  Ask yourself: what's in it for me?  In exchange for 22 minutes of mediocre television programming, we are bombarded with eight minutes of intelligence-draining dreck.  Is that a fair exchange of value for value?  I don't think so.  There has got to be a better way.  Life is too short to live in a fog of cognitive larceny.

It may be time to launch the Attention Rights Movement.