The Attention Recession
Why CPMs Are Rising While Performance Is Falling
The Great Attention Shortage
Global advertising revenue is expected to reach $1.08 trillion in 2025, with growth of 6.0% — down from previous projections of 7.7% due to economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions. But here's the real story buried in these numbers: we're experiencing the first global attention recession.
The Math Doesn't Add Up
Supply vs. Demand: Digital advertising accounts for 73.2% of global ad revenue, rising to 81.6% when including digital extensions. Yet attention spans aren't growing—they're fragmenting across more platforms and touchpoints.
The Inflation of Irrelevance: CPMs are rising while conversion rates are falling. We're paying more to reach people who are paying less attention.
Platform Proliferation: Every platform wants to be an advertising platform. Netflix has ads, LinkedIn has ads, even Spotify has video ads now. We're not growing the attention pie—we're slicing it thinner.
The Real Competition
Social vs. Search: Social platforms (+11.9% growth) are stealing attention from search, fundamentally changing how customers discover products and services.
CTV vs. Linear: Connected TV expects double-digit growth (+13.8%) as linear TV viewership collapses, but total video attention isn't increasing.
Retail Media vs. Traditional Media: Retail media is projected to grow at more than twice the rate of spend overall (+15.6%), cannibalizing traditional media budgets.
The Performance Paradox
More Targeting, Less Impact: Despite better targeting technology, campaign performance is declining because attention quality is degrading.
The Algorithm Arms Race: Platforms optimize for engagement, not conversion. What keeps users scrolling doesn't necessarily make them buy.
Attribution Breakdown: Cross-platform measurement challenges mean we're optimizing for vanity metrics instead of business outcomes.
The Strategic Response
Quality Over Quantity: Focus on fewer, higher-quality touchpoints rather than broad reach across multiple platforms.
Attention Analytics: Measure attention quality, not just attention quantity. Viewability isn't enough—you need engagement depth.
Platform Consolidation: Instead of being everywhere, dominate the platforms where your customers give the highest-quality attention.
Building for the Attention Economy
Creative Stopping Power: In an attention recession, creative quality becomes the ultimate differentiator. Invest in thumb-stopping creative that earns attention rather than buys it.
Contextual Relevance: Make your ads so relevant to the context that they feel like content, not interruptions.
Value-First Messaging: Lead with value, not features. In an attention recession, you have seconds to prove you're worth the cognitive load.
The Measurement Revolution
Attention Scoring: Develop metrics that measure attention quality: how long users engage, how deeply they interact, how likely they are to remember.
Cross-Platform Journey Analysis: Map customer journeys across platforms to understand how fragmented attention actually converts.
Lifetime Attention Value: Calculate how much quality attention a customer gives you over their entire lifecycle, not just per campaign.
The Uncomfortable Truth
We're approaching peak digital advertising saturation. The easy growth from digital transformation is over. The next decade belongs to brands that can earn attention in an economy where attention is the scarcest resource.
Prediction: By 2026, "attention economics" will replace "media planning" as the core competency for marketing success, and CMOs will hire attention architects instead of media planners.