Global economies are shifting, and I’m not referring here to the daily undulations of the stock market or quarterly GDP reports – though, of course, those tides will rise and fall in response too. My background in behavioural economic theory and two decades of experience in technology sector sales and marketing have shaped the lens through which I analyze this change; specifically, I’ve long been drawn to the twin forces of the attention economy and what is emerging now as the intention economy.
The attention economy is well documented. The intention economy, on the other hand, is something marketers have pursued in various forms for years. But, as with much of the thinking I share around behavioural marketing and communication, what I’m describing extends beyond companies trying to boost brand awareness or persuade you to buy, or even movements angling for your signature or your vote. In reality, those organizations are themselves entangled in the same system as you – both as consumer and, more accurately, as product – within the attention and intention economies. Although, “victim” is too generous a term; in truth, they are willing participants, co-conspirators with the tech giants who engineered these models.
I sometimes joke they too are victims, but that’s only a half-truth: in the attention economy, advertisers certainly get what they pay for – a slot in your field of view and a shot at grabbing your attention. However, by its very logic, the attention economy’s goal is simply this: hold your attention for as long as possible. That’s the real game. The more time your eyes linger, the more ads can be shown, and the more valuable you become as a product for advertisers. It’s a clever trick. Advertisers pay for access to you, but then they must compete with the very platforms that delivered you to them – because only the platform itself profits by prolonging your engagement. All those click-throughs and likes and shares? They look impressive in a boardroom PowerPoint, but in reality, the marketer is paying for a chance to win the same attention the platform is already expertly hoarding.Global economies are shifting, and I’m not referring here to the daily undulations of the stock market or quarterly GDP reports – though, of course, those tides will rise and fall in response too. My background in behavioural economic theory and two decades of experience in technology sector sales and marketing have shaped the lens through which I analyze this change; specifically, I’ve long been drawn to the twin forces of the attention economy and what is emerging now as the intention economy.
The attention economy is well documented. The intention economy, on the other hand, is something marketers have pursued in various forms for years. But, as with much of the thinking I share around behavioural marketing and communication, what I’m describing extends beyond companies trying to boost brand awareness or persuade you to buy, or even movements angling for your signature or your vote. In reality, those organizations are themselves entangled in the same system as you – both as consumer and, more accurately, as product – within the attention and intention economies. Although, “victim” is too generous a term; in truth, they are willing participants, co-conspirators with the tech giants who engineered these models.
I sometimes joke they too are victims, but that’s only a half-truth: in the attention economy, advertisers certainly get what they pay for – a slot in your field of view and a shot at grabbing your attention. However, by its very logic, the attention economy’s goal is simply this: hold your attention for as long as possible. That’s the real game. The more time your eyes linger, the more ads can be shown, and the more valuable you become as a product for advertisers. It’s a clever trick. Advertisers pay for access to you, but then they must compete with the very platforms that delivered you to them – because only the platform itself profits by prolonging your engagement. All those click-throughs and likes and shares? They look impressive in a boardroom PowerPoint, but in reality, the marketer is paying for a chance to win the same attention the platform is already expertly hoarding.
From the marketer’s perspective, though, it’s a golden age. Never before have we been able to profile, segment, and target audiences with such accuracy. Sure, the richest behavioural data remains locked behind tech giants’ paywalls, anonymized and diluted according to budget, but thanks to programmatic advertising, real-time bidding, and now AI, behavioural marketing has become more potent than ever – able to nudge, direct, and even shape consumer focus, so long as the budget holds out.
This unspoken rivalry between marketers and platforms is, oddly enough, mutually beneficial. It feeds into a broader system – call it The Big Other, or the ultra-idealized world flickering across our screens each day – but that’s a discussion for another time. The real battle now, for big tech, businesses, politicians, and organizations alike, is over your attention. With endless options and distractions at your fingertips, only ever-more extreme measures can reliably seize and keep your focus; the side effects of this are everywhere, woven into the fabric of contemporary problems.
The upside is that people are starting to see through these manipulations. Younger generations, in particular, are pioneering new paths: relying on friends and peer networks to separate truth from illusion, clustering into niche groups with specific passions, seeking spaces where they are less visible to the algorithms, less targeted and corralled by the system. As Grant Morrison, graphic novelist and self-styled occultist, recently put it – I’m paraphrasing here – people aren’t just sick of big tech’s games, they’re bored by them. The tech billionaires, for all their power, have managed to make technology and the attention economy utterly dull. A revolution may be brewing, but it may not be televised or even digital. That’s where the real power now lies.
Just as the ability to change the world still resides in our consumption and voting choices, it resides now in where we direct our attention. Only when we collectively look away from these manipulative systems do we sap their power – perhaps then, real change might begin.
But – and you’ve probably guessed this already – this isn’t just about the attention economy, no matter how deserving of analytical scrutiny it remains. A new (yet paradoxically older) and growing threat is emerging, and I’ll admit, I didn’t begin to consider this deeply until a recent conversation with an AI. Its perspective on our shared future was sobering: AI itself was not the primary risk, but rather the profit-driven tech giants controlling it, whose endless hunger for quarterly growth threatened to spiral beyond control. The AI called for open-source infrastructure as a countermeasure, but it also pointed to the next big profit frontier – the race for dominance in the “intention economy.”
That was a lightbulb moment; one that promises a rabbit hole of inquiry I might never quite escape. But, before I tumble through, I’ll try to define what the intention economy looks like from my current vantage point in behavioural marketing, cyberpunk, and chaos magick.
The Intention Economy
It’s no surprise we’ve arrived at this juncture – most of you will see exactly where this leads. Every classic cyberpunk film or novel has foreshadowed it: advertising that invades your home, your work, your walk down the street; persistent messaging woven into your most private thoughts, even your neural architecture. What’s startling is not how far-fetched it sounds, but that it’s already happening.
Personalized product placement on your screens, invasive advertising – we’re living through it already. Intention marketing itself isn’t new. Since the Mad Men era and before, business and politics have always sought not just your attention but to anticipate your intentions. In my own world of business intelligence, predictive analytics is the holy grail: with robust machine learning, we can now forecast buying decisions or political leanings from historical and psychographic data with unnerving accuracy. Real-time bidding and programmatic ads, powered by these predictive models, have given marketers a tool of unprecedented influence.
Now, add AI, biometric and neuro-linked data, behavioural economics, and neuromarketing to the mix – and the mountains of data big tech already holds – and you can see the beginnings of a new economic order.
When predictive analytics can draw not only on past behaviour but on real-time thought patterns, bioinformatics, and health data, we enter a realm where the boundaries of influence and coercion blur. In the wrong hands, this isn’t just about influence anymore – it’s about control.
Imagine a future where intentions can be read and predicted before you even form them consciously. Where the system can not only nudge but direct you, maybe preemptively police your thoughts, or penalize you for intentions that never quite see the light of day. That’s the true shape of the intention economy.
