Have attention spans really shrunk? + marketing myopia + 2025 recession opportunity

Hi

This edition is all about our most valuable resource – attention. I look at:

· The mythology around shrinking attention spans

· The symptoms of marketing myopia

· The big payoff from taking a long-term view of marketing spend during Australia’s nasty economic slowdown

As usual, send me an email with any comments.

Ben

Have Attention Spans Really Shrunk?

Towards the end of last year, The Australian Financial Review ran a profile on billionaire miner, Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest. The article ran to a mammoth 9000 words. In the print edition, the article spread itself out over six pages.

Who on earth would have time to read that?

But apparently it was a big hit, generating massive traffic.

The success of the article highlights one of the major issues in communications: attention spans.

“Humans can’t concentrate anymore” is a narrative that has permeated communications. It says everything – articles, blogs, speeches, presentations – must be shorter (and shinier) to cater to distracted audiences.

We are definitely in an ‘attention economy’. And as communicators and marketers, we fail at the outset if we can’t get our audience’s attention.

But the ‘shorter-is-best’ argument fails to recognise the nuance and opportunity for B2B, knowledge organisations, and those targeting sophisticated audiences, to be contrarian and go longer and deeper with their content and comms.

Are our attention spans really shorter than goldfish?

Back in 2015, Microsoft released a report showing that digitisation had slashed our attention spans. Humans could concentrate, the research said, for just 8 seconds now – a shorter period than a goldfish – and a fall from 12 seconds in 2000.

It turns out Microsoft’s attention research was pretty fishy, with many struggling to find the scientific data to support even the claim that goldfish had short attention spans.

There is credible evidence, however, that attention spans have been shrinking. Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatic at the University of California and author of Attention Span, has been tracking attention spans on screens for 20 years.

She found that attention span – the period people spend on any screen before they get distracted and switch – was 2.5 minutes, on average, in 2004. But by 2012 it had fallen to 75 seconds, and was now just 47 seconds. (The median attention span is 40 seconds.)

Mark attributes falling attention spans to the usual suspects: social media, multitasking, etc. Short-form video – Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts and TikTok videos – has both tapped into this trend and no doubt exacerbated it.

One interesting thing Mark notes is that ‘shot length’ on film and TV has fallen to just 4 seconds. (Shorter shot lengths create a faster tempo.)

Overdone dogma

But there are different perspectives. Others have found our brain is wired to wander; that attention spans have been remarkably stable; and that the shrinking attention span is a myth because attention is task-specific.

And Mark herself has a caveat. She notes the falling attention data is an average. “Sometimes people do spend longer”, she notes.

When it comes to communicating and content, I believe the shrinking attention span dogma has been overdone.

We have always faced a battle for attention. As a journalist, I was taught to hook people straight away or lose them. Ads, jingles and slogans have all operated on the basis that you had limited time to attract people.

Lots like it longer

There is also lots of evidence that people are more than happy to spend longer consuming content:

· Binge watching has become increasingly popular. According to Deloitte, 68% of viewers binge watch television (watch 3+ episodes in one sitting.)

· While shot lengths are falling, data shows the length of blockbuster movies is surging. In 2023 they were on average a full half hour longer than 2020.

· Book reading is still healthy, particularly fiction. Yes, average time spent reading overall has fallen, but that is skewed by non-readers. Those who read for pleasure still read for one-and-a-half hours per day.

· Research shows that long-form content often performs better. (7000+ word articles generate four times more traffic than the average length of 900 to 1200 words.); and

· Other research shows that Gen Z is just as likely to consume long-form content as short.

Smart marketers and communicators are responding. Research shows marketers are increasing – and planning to increase – long-form content to reach new audiences, meet demand, boost engagement and enhance ROI.

This reflects my experience: clients are getting as good – if not better – response from long-form content, from videos to white papers.

Obviously, quality matters. Heidi Taylor, the B2B marketing expert, made a good point when she said: “Our attention spans aren’t shrinking, there is just so much less that actually compels our attention”.

Taylor added there is way too much “consistently mediocre or completely boring” content.

She has a point.

We’re jumping around snacking because nothing is truly nourishing and satiating.

Offering something hard to come by

But the most compelling argument for not ditching longer-form, high-quality content is that it provides a huge opportunity to differentiate.

Harvard Business School professor, Youngme Moon, wrote an interesting book, Different, about how brands can successfully position themselves in a marketplace characterised by abundance.

Moon’s broad thesis is that competition has led to copycat sameness. Smart challenger brands stand out and achieve true differentiation, by doing what no one else is.

At the end of the book, she tells us about how she gives her students an assignment to imagine the ‘idea brands’ of tomorrow.

Moon believes one of the major characteristics of successful firms of the future is that “they will offer something that is hard to come by”.

“There is an opportunity always, for brands to create value by offering a break from that which is profuse.”

What is profuse now is short, shallow, scatter-gun content and comms. What is lacking is quality, thoughtful communication.

Those who provide the latter will be the ones who earn the right to people’s valuable attention … whether it’s shrinking or not.

***

What About Our Own Attention Spans?

An important note to add is that as communicators and marketers, we shouldn’t just be worrying about our audience’s attention spans, but our own.

There is no doubt that falling attention spans have increased ‘marketing myopia’.

The major symptoms are:

1. Not enough focus on brand building; too much on short-term, performance marketing tactics

2. Not developing a strategy; and

3. Failing to invest in team marketing and comms skills

***

This Recession is Creating a Window of Opportunity

Of course, our ability to focus our attention on what truly matters is being particularly challenged right now.

Australia’s leaders seem reluctant to admit it, but we are in a nasty recession.

Well, the private sector is in a nasty recession based on per capita GDP. (Population growth means the economy is growing overall, but when you divide economic activity by people, it’s shrinking … as are living standards.)

Source: AMP

I graduated from university in the teeth of the early 1990s recession, so I have a strong fear of them. But it’s possible to reframe them as an opportunity.

Fear triggers the ‘fight or flight’ hormones, adrenaline and cortisol: we become risk averse and focused on short-term survival; and that can mean we miss longer-term opportunities.

When the economy turns down, most businesses become fearful and slash spending. But, as marketing expert Peter Field has highlighted, this marketing myopia causes immense damage.

‘Slashers’ lose market share and pricing power and that, ultimately, leads to lower profits. The damage is long term. It can take 5 years for slashers to recover to pre-recession levels.

Field found that when a company spends more during a recession it hits short-term profitability. But when the economy bounces back, these companies win big. The gains:

· Higher market share

· Better pricing power

· Greater market penetration; and

· A big uplift in profit

This happened during the 2008 ‘GFC’ recession.

As you can see in the chart above, the companies that invested heavily during the recession in ESOV (excess share of voice) – the exposure they gained from advertising that exceeded their market share – generated strong growth in profits over the long term.

Other experts and research support Field’s findings.

B2B firms that grow spend during downturns also win big.

Obviously, some companies must cut back to survive; but those that keep spending and investing will profit handsomely when we emerge from the current downturn.