Attention Competition with Advertisement

TL;DR

This paper models how advertisement influences consumer attention in digital markets, revealing that ads are more effective under extreme attention scarcity and that introducing dummy items can boost market share.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model of attention competition in digital markets, analyzing the effects of advertisement and dummy items on market dynamics.

Findings

Advertisement effectiveness increases with attention scarcity.

Dummy items can enhance market share of advertised products.

Analytical and simulation results support the model's predictions.

Abstract

In the new digital age, information is available in large quantities. Since information consumes primarily the attention of its recipients, the scarcity of attention is becoming the main limiting factor. In this study, we investigate the impact of advertisement pressure on a cultural market where consumers have a limited attention capacity. A model of competition for attention is developed and investigated analytically and by simulation. Advertisement is found to be much more effective when attention capacity of agents is extremely scarce. We have observed that the market share of the advertised item improves if dummy items are introduced to the market while the strength of the advertisement is kept constant.