'Attention Economy' May Help Measure Tech Issues, TPI Told

The concept of the attention economy, where people's attention can help measure aspects of technology, may have merit for government and industry, stakeholders told the Technology Policy Institute. The FTC could "look at how someone" is giving attention as the agency uses various alternative metrics, said Competition Bureau Director Ian Conner in Q&A with TPI President Scott Wallsten. Connor, noting he was speaking only for himself, said he "would never typically define books" as in direct "competition with social media" and with movies, which could compete for a person's attention at "any given moment." The attention economy could be a way to measure markets that lack prices for consumers in the typical sense, he said in a video released Tuesday. "We’re trying to look for different metrics when we don’t have our normal price or revenue measures." Attention can be "kind of like a price" for a product or service, and "it has a price that is very subjective" to each person, said Brown University associate professor of economics Kareen Rozen. "There’s more complementarity between the services than we’re giving them credit for" sometimes, she said of technology. Because consumers can use multiple tech services at once, spending attention may not be a zero-sum game, said participants including Comscore Senior Director-Product Management James Muldrow.