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The Future of Advertising : New Approaches to the Attention Economy

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This is a very interesting book by its unique structure, which basically is a documentary recorder of an advertising conference. Instead of only one or two authors writing a book, The Future of Advertising is most likely written by a group of people who have been involved in the advertising industry for years. Richard Adler's research, the future of advertising on the attention economy, is the major documentary piece of this book, following by various opinions and afterthoughts from other advertising experts. To me, which reading this book, it felt like I was like actually attending a conference and listening to Adler¡¦s report and others¡¦ discussions from diverse perspectives.

According to Adler, in the future, the total amount of information given will keep increasing, but the actual amount of human attention is fixed because no one can absorb all the information that surrounds us. Advertisers have to create more innovative strategies and techniques to ensure their message is delivered efficiently to their consumers. One of his predictions ¡Vin fact, has already begun to happen ¡Vis that ¡§individuals will be able to exercise more control over the media content that they consume¡¨(p.43). In the future, not only our capacity to produce information increased extraordinarily, but our ability to distribute it is also expanding rapidly. Once the media content (or advertising content) becomes democratized, the distinction between consumers and media-content creators will diminish. To advertisers, a possible solution to overcome such challenge is to invent a ¡§new content¡¨, which the boundary between advertising and editorial information is ¡§nonexistent¡¨ or ¡§indistinct¡¨.

I highly recommend this book as a ready primer to those people who are interested in advertising, future forecasting, and advertising-and-society relationships. Several significant social issues, such as privacy, social ecology, cultural role and attention economy, are all addressed at this book. Perhaps, its brevity allows for expedient reading, yet does not provide ample sufficient discussions.