Opinion | How the $500 Billion Attention Industry Really Works

Once upon a time, the Internet was predicated on user-generated content. The hope was that ordinary people would take advantage of the Web’s low barrier for publishing to post great things, motivated simply by the joy of open communication. But then ad sales came into play.

That business model is still what most of the Internet relies on today. Rev... See more

Google and Facebook play the roles of central bankers for our attention economy. They represented a generation of “free-to-play” games that unlocked infinite consumer surplus and participation, and with increasing power as the brokers of the value exchange, they now require “paying to win”.

Kevin’s idea for reversing the attention economy: What if companies paid audiences directly for their attention?

Another idea: What if anybody could run an ad and receive payments once people clicked on/watched it?