If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Did you know that the global advertising empire we see today actually began with a single 19th-century newspaper sold for just one penny?
- Have you ever wondered why modern technology is so effective at hijacking your focus, and who is actually profiting from every second of your scrolling?
- What’s the secret to how 'Attention Merchants' successfully transformed our private thoughts and free time into the world's most valuable commodity?
Listen to The Attention Merchants — Free Audiobook
Loading player...
Key Takeaways from The Attention Merchants
- Learn how the 1833 launch of the penny press pioneered the modern business model of selling a product at a loss to harvest and resell audience attention to advertisers.
- Discover how early advertising techniques like free samples and direct mail successfully sold useless medicines and were even repurposed as propaganda to recruit millions for World War I.
- Understand the 1920s concept of 'demand engineering,' where advertisers fabricated problems like 'halitosis' to create massive consumer demand for their products.
- Find out how the concept of branding emerged as a deliberate strategy to engineer a stellar corporate reputation overnight, rather than earning it through decades of hard work.
- Explore how the advent of radio shifted advertising from public spaces directly into consumers' homes, allowing brands to sponsor regular content and capture captive audiences.
The Attention Merchants — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Newspaper ads were once purely informational, until a single New York City daily ultimately changed everything forever.
Chapter 3: Advertising was used to build fortunes on worthless remedies and to bolster the British Army during World War I.
Chapter 4: During the 1920s, advertising and branding grew increasingly methodical.
Chapter 5: Radio and television were the twentieth century’s most successful attention-grabbers indeed.
Chapter 6: Email made it simpler to reach people and capture their attention.
Chapter 7: The internet created a new chance to harvest attention, but it wasn’t immediately clear how to use it.
Chapter 8: Celebrities command our attention like no other entity.
The Attention Merchants Summary & Overview
The Attention Merchants (2016) details the history of the fascinating field of advertising. These blinks will teach you all about the “attention industry,” offering a historical account of how advertising has arrived at its modern incarnation.
Who Should Listen to The Attention Merchants?
- Entrepreneurs and aspiring businesspeople
- Veteran marketers, or those new to the industry
- Tech industry employees, including programmers and developers
Books Similar to The Attention Merchants
Readers who enjoyed this also liked these titles.
Paid Attention
★ 4.1 / 5 • 35 ratingsInnovative Advertising for a Digital World
Attention Factory
★ 4.0 / 5 • 34 ratingsThe Story of TikTok and China's ByteDance
The Curse of Bigness
★ 4.6 / 5 • 29 ratingsAntitrust in the New Gilded Age
Targeted
★ 3.8 / 5 • 19 ratingsHow Technology is Revolutionizing Advertising and the Way Companies Reach Consumers