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The Reduction In People’s Attention Spans Has Been Very Profitable For Meta
The more emotional and scatterbrained we become the more money Meta makes
(Not intended to be investment advice, opinions are my own.)
Shortening attention spans — going from books to movies to YouTube videos to TikTok shorts (and Instagram posts) — is commonly seen as bad for humanity. But it’s been great for Meta, thanks to its position at the top of the social media industry.
That’s because the value of an ad is based not on how long a user watches the ad for. Rather, it’s primarily based on whether it achieves its objective — getting the user to buy or subscribe to whatever’s being sold. Thus, an ad that’s 5 seconds long could be worth far more than one that’s 90 seconds long provided that it reliably produces more clicks and purchases. Companies are paying for attention, not time.
In a world where we’re accustomed to video content being 10 minutes or more and an ad being 45 seconds to a minute, there’s just not that much room in a 20 minute (internet) surfing session for ads.
But in a world where both content and ads tend to be at most 15 seconds long, you can shove a ton of ads into even a short surfing session. And like we observed, it’s not time but ad quality…
