The buzz word of these days is "attention", like "being aware", not like "being careful".

What is attention?
You can look at this definition (via French Wikipedia, I translate):
"Attention is when the mind captures, in a clear and vivid way, an object or a series of ideas among many other possible ones (...). It implies that some objects are removed so that the others can be efficiently treated."

Moving from psychology to business, this definition can be summarized, in a very personal way:

• instead of thinking how you can please your wife or play with your kid, focus your attention on how you can spend your money
• once you are compeled to buy, what product "among many other possible ones" will "capture" your mind (brrr… scary, isn't it?)

Well… But this new and more psychological definition of advertising presupposes that we are not so stupid, which is already not as bad as the old advertising definition...

We are able to make choices, so how can marketers influence them?

By capturing as much attention as possible.

Attention can take different shapes that have a different intensity. If we only look at the attention through a computer (which has a limited number of inputs and outputs), we can define the following kinds of attention:

• viewing (reading, watching a video, viewing an image, etc.)
• hearing (the sound of a video, a song, a speech, etc.)
• using (moving the mouse, clicking, keyboard strikes, joysticks, etc.)

They correspond to the three senses that are accessible through computers, if you assimilate using and touching.

As man is multitask (well, this is true for his wife), he/she can see and hear at the same time. And "see" does not mean "use".
Of these three kinds of attention, one can only say that usage seems more intense than the other ones, because it takes into account touching, viewing, sometimes hearing, and always thinking.

Different business sectors will prefer different kinds of attention:

• newspapers will focus on viewing (reading mostly, but more and more video)
• the music industry on hearing
• the game editors will target the usage.
• brands will mix the three above to maximize attention

Economy is the science of scarcity management, "attention economy" need a scarce resource.

Time is a scarce resource that is common to all of us.

So, I think that attention economy can use time as a currency. But which time? We can define three kinds of time:

• viewing time,
• hearing time,
• using time

The total time spent on one of these attentions (don't forget that they can be done in parallel), can be called "attention time", and can be measured.