The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

Imagine a bustling 19th-century city street where newspapers are sold for a penny, a price so low it seems almost a giveaway. This was the dawn of a revolution in how news was consumed, transforming the public from distant observers into a mass audience. The penny press pioneered a business model that flipped the traditional idea of profit on its head: newspapers were sold at a loss, with revenue made primarily through advertising. This shift meant that readers were not the customers but rather the product being sold to advertisers. Sensational stories of suicides, scandals, and crime filled the pages, captivating readers who had previously been untouched by the press. The success of this model was staggering; within months, some papers sold thousands of copies daily, reaching a broad spectrum of society.

Simultaneously, across the Atlantic in Paris, a new form of visual attention capture was taking shape. Giant posters, some towering seven feet tall, adorned city walls with vivid colors and provocative images. These posters were not mere advertisements but dazzling spectacles designed to seize the wandering gaze of passersby. The use of bright yellows, reds, and blues, combined with depictions of half-dressed dancers in motion, created a sensory assault that was nearly impossible to ignore. These posters transformed the urban landscape into a chromolithographic salon, where walls themselves became canvases of commercial art.

But this explosion of attention-grabbing techniques was not without consequence. As posters multiplied and overwhelmed cityscapes, public backlash arose, with critics decrying the visual pollution and moral decay brought on by relentless advertising. This early revolt foreshadowed the ongoing tension between commercial interests and societal well-being, a theme that would echo throughout the history of attention capture.

From penny papers to Parisian posters, the industrialization of human attention had begun. This era marked the birth of an ecosystem where attention was cultivated, harvested, and sold, laying the foundation for the modern attention economy. As we move forward, we will explore how these early innovations evolved into sophisticated scientific advertising and propaganda campaigns that shaped not only consumer behavior but entire societies.