The Attention Recession: Solving Marketing’s $500 Billion AdWaste Dilemma

Published April 14, 2025

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Overview

In my previous essays, I’ve documented a startling reality: $500 billion annually—70% of digital advertising budgets—flows from brands to Big Adtech platforms in what can only be described as “AdWaste.” This massive wealth transfer occurs not because of flawed strategies, but because brands are trapped in an endless cycle of reacquisition, paying auction-driven premiums to reach customers they already own. Imagine paying rent for a house you built—this is the absurdity of modern marketing.

While I’ve outlined how NeoMarketing innovations in Agentic AI (Marketing Agents and Madtech Twins) and interactive email (AMP-powered NeoMails and NeoN) can address this crisis, I’ve come to a deeper realisation: AdWaste isn’t the disease—it’s a symptom.

The Attention Recession: Marketing’s Root Problem

The true ailment afflicting modern marketing is the Attention Recession. Consumers today drown in a deluge of hundreds of daily brand messages—emails, push notifications, social updates, and ads—all vying for slivers of their fragmented focus. Attention, once abundant, has become a scarce commodity. When customers disengage, relationships wither, leaving brands no choice but to rent access to these same customers through increasingly expensive ad platforms.

This creates a vicious cycle: declining engagement triggers more aggressive advertising, which further erodes attention, demanding even greater ad spending. It’s a self-perpetuating doom loop where brands fund their own obsolescence.

The Anatomy of Attention Bankruptcy

Consider the typical brand-customer relationship:

• Emails languish with single-digit open rates
• Push notifications are blocked or ignored
• Social posts vanish in algorithm-driven feeds
• Loyalty programmes gather dust, their communications unread

Without reliable channels to engage customers they already know, marketers resort to the only “guaranteed” alternative: paying Google, Meta, and retail media networks to reacquire them. The economics are brutal. Each dormant customer becomes a revenue leak, forcing brands into a Faustian bargain: invest in creative reengagement strategies (slow, uncertain) or pay the adtech tax (instant, predictable).

Most choose the latter—not because it’s sustainable, but because it’s the path of least resistance. The promise of digital marketing—direct relationships, precision targeting, and personalised experiences—has collapsed under the weight of platform dependency.

Building Attention Bridges: From Renters to Owners

Breaking this cycle requires addressing the root cause: attention scarcity. To thrive, brands must rebuild “attention bridges”—reliable, value-driven channels that cut through the noise. Imagine a world where:

• Every interaction feels personalised, not transactional
• Customers seek out brand communications for genuine value
• Reacquisition costs plummet as engagement becomes habitual

This isn’t a utopian vision. Emerging innovations are already paving the way:

1. AI-Powered Personalisation at Scale: AI Twins—digital replicas of individual customers—can enable true 1:1 engagement, predicting needs and tailoring interactions in real time
2. Interactive Micro-Experiences: NeoMails transform traditional one-way communications into dialogues, allowing customers to browse products, redeem rewards, or transact within the email itself
3. Daily Engagement Vehicles: Atomic Rewards (Mu) and Microns—micro-incentives and exclusive content—turn mundane interactions into habit-forming rituals
4. Authenticated Attention Networks: The NeoN network reimagines advertising by leveraging verified customer identities (with consent), shifting from interruption to invitation

The Path Forward: Earning Attention, Not Buying It

The future of marketing isn’t about finding better ways to buy attention—it’s about earning and keeping it through superior experiences. This requires a paradigm shift:

• From Renters to Owners: Build owned channels customers want to engage with
• From Noise to Signal: Replace generic blasts with insights-driven relevance
• From Cost Centre to Profit Engine: Redirect AdWaste savings into loyalty-building experiences

In this series, I’ll explore the Attention Recession in depth and introduce several breakthrough innovations that offer real solutions. I’ll delve into Agentic AI’s role in automating personalised journeys, the science of habit-forming engagement, and the rise of “attention-first” metrics that prioritise lifetime value over clicks.

The $500 billion AdWaste crisis is a wake-up call. The brands that thrive will be those that stop renting attention and start earning it—one meaningful interaction at a time. The question is no longer how to buy attention, but how to make your brand worth paying attention to.

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2021 Writings

Attention Messaging: Bridging Adtech, CPaaS and Martech (August 2021): “Digital marketers find themselves trapped between new customer acquisition and re-acquisition of those whom they lose. The supply of new customers is not infinite – after a time, there are diminishing returns in acquiring new customers whose spending potential is low. And yet, for the business to show growth, they need to keep new customers coming in. Where do they find such customers? From their own pool of lost or dormant customers! This leads to what I call the “doom loop” of spending: customers get acquired, some of them become inactive, they are then re-acquired, some among them become inactive again, and they are re-re-acquired…The marketing triangle’s three vertices are new customer acquisition and re-acquisition (adtech, where 90% of the budget is consumed), the transactional messages sent via communications platforms (CPaaS, or communications platform as a service), and martech platforms focused on improving customer engagement on their owned properties (websites and apps). The missing centre is the world of “Attention Messaging” – a cross between attention marketing and push messaging. This is the world marketers pay least attention to leading to businesses sacrificing a big chunk of revenues and profits…Whether the problem is attention deficit, attention recession or information overload, the solution is the same – Attention Messaging needs to be done right.”

Marketing: Disrupted and Simplified (August 2021): “By not building deep relationships with existing customers and by bombarding them with irrelevant messages, marketers have trained their customers to ignore their communications, thus reducing the efficacy of the only method of bringing existing customers back to their website or app for transactions. Once customers start ignoring the messages, the marketer has little or no choice but to spend 10X more on re-acquiring that same customer via the tech giants. With everyone doing the same, the only winners are the attention sellers (Google and Facebook), who in turn create even more powerful data hoses by giving consumers even more free utilities. The irony is that as marketers did not pay attention to their customer needs, they are paying even more dearly to the attention intermediaries to reach their own ex-customers…This has been the big blunder that marketers made: they did not value the attention of their customers. Instead of building a hotline, they cut the line…Make attention the new acquisition, and rewards the new experience.”

Stop Loss: The Power of Attention Messaging (September 2021): “Marketing needs to return to its roots. Customers have needs, time and money. Once upon a time, marketers captured attention through a combination of copy, imagery and creativity to grab attention, surface the need, and channel the money. As customers become digital, data and cohorts become the focus. So, while budgets have shifted from traditional to digital, marketers missed a step. Digital customers not only leave pheromones for tracking but also have an identity with inboxes. For the first time, real-time messaging was possible to a segment of one or few, a subset of the traditional “all”. The identity-inbox combo should have been utilised to ensure the cost of engagement becomes a fraction of that of acquisition…The core idea of Attention Messaging is simple. Pay for attention. Pay existing customers for their attention, rather than pay many times more to the tech giants for the same attention…Attention Messaging needs a currency to reward attention. This needs to work across push messaging channels and brands. No single brand can make it work because they cannot offer enough rewards on their own to make it worthwhile, even if they have a loyalty program.”

Microns and Loyalty: Gamifying and Rewarding Attention (June 2021): “Email is the best channel for brand communications and 88% emails (7 out of 8) are not opened. And despite all this, email is seen to have the best RoI across all channels. So the big takeaway is: the email inbox is one of the most powerful marketing platforms. Hundreds of billions of emails make their way to inboxes each month, all competing for our attention. And yet, most emails are ignored by the recipients. Imagine the multiplier impact if more emails could be read by their recipients. This was my thinking behind microns – short, informational and identified emails that can be consumed in 15-30 seconds. This itself should take open rates higher. What more could be done to make microns even better – towards a 100% open rate? That is where the idea of a loyalty program comes in. And as I studied both email and loyalty, it became clear that these two worlds had never intersected…I started thinking about a few questions. What if brands could incentivise their customers to open and click on emails? (Of course, this could be easily abused but that can be addressed by monitoring the time taken for actions after opening an email, or what happens after the click. And incentives could be offered on a differential basis to the best customers versus the others.) Why has a multi-brand email loyalty program never been created? (This could be because no single email service provider has a large enough market share to get the critical mass for making such a program successful.) Would consumers respond to such a program or just ignore it? (The only way to know would be to actually do it and find out!) Is paying for attention a good thing? (Of course, it is – all advertising is about paying for attention. The difference is that brands pay intermediaries rather than their consumers.)”

Imagining Mus: An Attention-Action Currency (June 2021): “Rather than target the entire universe of consumers, what if brands could just focus on their existing customers and reward the less active ones for their attention? The prize for entrepreneurs to get it right is a large chunk of the global advertising pie. For brands, it is an optimisation of their huge marketing budgets. And for consumers, their ‘delete’ mindset could be converted to a ‘delight’ mindset when it comes to dealing with the inflow of messages they get. How can a win-win platform be created for all? It was time to bring multiple strands – microns, loyalty, micronbox – together into a larger idea of “Mus” (pronounced as ‘mews’; and derived from the µ symbol that I have previously suggested as an identifier for microns). Mus can become the currency for attention and action…The combination of subscription, an incentive (Mus) wrapped in a micron and delivered to a special inbox can transform brand-to-consumer communications. Just as loyalty programs reward the Best customers, Mus in microns are the key to unlocking attention of the Rest customers – moving them from inactive or semi-active to expectantly engaged.”

Atomic Rewards: The Solution to Attention Recession (October 2021): “Atomic Rewards is an idea whose time has come. It is the answer to the problem of attention recession that confronts every marketer. Attention and engagement need as much focus as marketers are doing with customer journeys, onsite and in-app experiences, and transactions. These Mu moments can be the secret to engineering profitable customers for life.”

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Past and Future

In reviewing my writings from 2021, I’m struck by a profound realisation: the fundamental diagnosis of marketing’s attention problem and the conceptual solutions I proposed were largely correct. The core ideas—incentives (Atomic Rewards), reliable communication channels (Attention Messaging), and 1:1 personalisation—were all present. Yet four years later, these solutions haven’t been widely implemented.

This raises two critical questions: Why did these ideas struggle to gain traction then, and what makes me believe their time has finally come now?

Why Previous Implementations Faltered

The barriers to implementing attention-focused solutions were significant:

Coordination Challenges: Atomic Rewards (Mu) needed cross-brand cooperation to create sufficient value. This created a classic chicken-and-egg problem—no brand wanted to be first when the network effect wasn’t established. Many brands had existing loyalty programmes, making bespoke integrations prohibitively complex.

Value Exchange Limitations: The “Mu burn” problem remained unsolved. Consumers needed clear, compelling ways to redeem earned rewards, but creating a unified redemption system across brands proved challenging.

Technical Complexity: Creating AMP-powered interactive emails required merging creative design with sophisticated coding—a capability gap for most marketing agencies who lacked in-house software development talent. This made implementation expensive and complicated.

Channel Fragmentation: As WhatsApp opened its platform for business messaging, attention naturally gravitated to where users were already engaged. Despite higher costs and marketing restrictions, WhatsApp offered an easier solution for bottom-of-funnel conversion—mirroring the “path of least resistance” that adtech had established.

Inbox Challenges: Email environments grew increasingly cluttered despite filtration attempts. Gmail’s filtering algorithms sometimes became overzealous, relegating even legitimate brand communications to secondary folders, further complicating attention capture.

Why The Time Is Now Right

What has fundamentally changed to make these solutions viable today? Several transformative shifts have aligned:

Technological Maturation:

• AI Revolution: Generative and agentic AI now enables truly personalised content creation at scale, making N=1 marketing finally feasible without proportional cost increases
• Interactive Technology: AMP has matured, with better tooling and many success stories across marketing campaigns from multiple brands
• Identity Solutions: Cookie deprecation has accelerated interest in authenticated identity approaches, making solutions like NeoN more relevant

Economic Imperatives:

• Rising Acquisition Costs: Continually increasing CAC has reached unsustainable levels, forcing brands to seek alternatives
• Privacy Regulations: GDPR, CCPA, and similar regulations have complicated third-party data usage, making first-party data engagement more valuable
• Post-Covid Digital Fatigue: Consumers have become increasingly selective about digital engagement, raising the stakes for attention capture

Implementation Innovations:

• Microns As Engagement Wrappers: Rather than replacing brand content, Mu and Microns now function as engagement “wrappers” that drive opens first, creating space for product messaging after attention is secured
• Gamification Elements: Interactive games, puzzles, and challenges embedded within Microns create habit-forming engagement patterns
• Simplified Reward Mechanics: The “Mu burn” problem is being addressed through straightforward mechanisms like raffles with cash prizes, creating immediate perceived value
• Progency Model: End-to-end responsibility for “Rest” customer segments through the Progency approach provides greater control over the entire messaging ecosystem
• Monetisation Through NeoN: The brand-to-brand advertising network creates additional revenue streams, effectively “printing money” for brands that successfully capture attention

The Path Forward

The confluence of these factors creates a uniquely favourable environment for attention-focused solutions. While the diagnosis and conceptual framework were sound in 2021, the implementation ecosystem wasn’t ready. Today, the technological, economic, and operational elements have aligned to make these approaches not just viable but imperative.

The $500 billion AdWaste market represents both the size of the problem and the scale of the opportunity. As acquisition costs continue to rise and privacy changes further complicate traditional targeting, brands face an existential need to rebuild direct attention channels with customers they already know.

The solutions I proposed years ago weren’t wrong—they were early. Now, with enhanced implementation approaches and a more conducive market environment, we stand at the threshold of a fundamental shift in how brands capture and maintain customer attention and thus break free from the attention recession and the AdWaste it creates.

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Recent Books

Before we delve into possible solutions for the attention recession, it’s important to first explore what “attention” itself truly entails. I asked Perplexity for a summary of books published over the past three to four years that examine this very concept. Here is the resulting list.

1. “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Valuable Resource” by Chris Hayes: This book explores how attention has become a commodified resource and discusses its implications on society. It offers perspectives on how to manage attention in a world dominated by digital media.
2. “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity” by Gloria Mark: This book explores how technology affects our attention and offers strategies to regain focus in a digital world. It discusses topics like multitasking, social media’s impact on attention, and how to manage mental resources.
3. “Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day” by Amishi P. Jha: This book provides insights into the science of attention and offers practical mindfulness exercises to improve focus and mental clarity. It’s based on extensive research across various professions and environments.
4. “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again” by Johann Hari: This book explores the societal factors contributing to our inability to focus and offers insights into how to regain deep thinking skills in a distracted world.
5. “Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction” by Chris Bailey: This book delves into the science of focus and provides techniques to enhance attention span, helping readers boost productivity in a world filled with distractions.
6. “Deep Focus” by Cal Newport: While not specifically titled as a book on attention, “Deep Focus” is part of Cal Newport’s broader work on deep work and productivity. It emphasizes the importance of eliminating distractions to achieve deep focus and extraordinary results.
7. “The Attention Economy: A Category Blueprint” by Dr. Karen Nelson-Field: This book focuses on the attention economy, providing a comprehensive guide to understanding and measuring attention in modern media. It’s more industry-oriented but offers insights into how attention is valued and measured.

The blurb from The Siren’s Call captures the story of our modern times: “We all feel it—the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. We bump into the zombies on their phones in the street, and sometimes they’re us. We stare in pity at the four people at the table in the restaurant, all on their phones, and then we feel the buzz in our pocket. Something has changed utterly: for most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, “With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade.” Hayes argues that we are in the midst of an epoch-defining transition whose only parallel is what happened to labor in the nineteenth century: attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated. The Sirens’ Call is the big-picture vision we urgently need to offer clarity and guidance. Because there is a breaking point. Sirens are designed to compel us, and now they are going off in our bedrooms and kitchens at all hours of the day and night, doing the bidding of vast empires, the most valuable companies in history, built on harvesting human attention. As Hayes writes, “Now our deepest neurological structures, human evolutionary inheritances, and social impulses are in a habitat designed to prey upon, to cultivate, distort, or destroy that which most fundamentally makes us human.” The Sirens’ Call is the book that snaps everything into a single holistic framework so that we can wrest back control of our lives, our politics, and our future.”

Given how saturated our attention channels have become, it’s hardly surprising that brand communications struggle to stand out. From relentless notifications to an overwhelming barrage of ads, every message competes for the same fragment of mental space. As a result, even the most carefully crafted campaigns often fail to reach us—the very customers they’re meant to engage.

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Books Summary – 1

I asked Perplexity for a for a summary of the ideas from the recent books on Attention and applicability for marketing.

The Crisis of Attention in the Digital Age: Insights from Contemporary Thought Leaders

The accelerating fragmentation of human attention has emerged as one of the defining challenges of the 21st century. As digital platforms weaponize psychological vulnerabilities to commodify focus, individuals and institutions face unprecedented threats to productivity, mental health, and societal cohesion. Drawing from seven seminal works published between 2021-2024, this analysis synthesizes groundbreaking research on attention economics, neuroscientific foundations of focus, and pragmatic strategies for reclaiming cognitive sovereignty in an age of perpetual distraction.

1. The Commodification of Attention: A New Resource War

Chris Hayes’ The Sirens’ Call frames attention as the “new oil,” arguing that tech platforms have engineered a global attention extraction economy comparable to 19th-century resource colonialism. Through algorithmic architectures that exploit dopamine-driven feedback loops, platforms convert human focus into measurable “attention minutes” traded in advertising markets. Hayes demonstrates how this commodification creates psychological alienation, with users becoming both laborer and product in attention markets. His analysis of “attention strip-mining” reveals how constant notifications mirror industrial age exploitation, demanding policy interventions akin to environmental regulations.

Karen Nelson-Field’s The Attention Economy: A Category Blueprint quantifies this crisis through media measurement frameworks. Her “attention seconds” metric exposes the fallacy of impression-based advertising, showing premium video commands 2.3X more focused attention than social media stories. This data-driven approach challenges marketers to prioritize attention quality over reach, advocating for authenticated identity solutions like NeoN to combat platform-driven attention arbitrage.

2. Neuroscientific Foundations of Focus

Gloria Mark’s Attention Span dismantles productivity myths through biometric studies revealing the natural 23-minute attention cycle. Her discovery of “kinetic attention”—the cognitive benefits of physical movement during focus breaks—revolutionizes workplace design principles. Mark demonstrates that strategic distraction (47-second email checks every 10.5 minutes) can boost creativity without derailing flow states, challenging orthodox time management doctrines.

Complementing this, Amishi Jha’s Peak Mind leverages decade-long mindfulness research with military and medical professionals. Her “12-minute daily practice” protocol shows 27% improvement in sustained attention through focused breathing exercises that strengthen the anterior cingulate cortex. Jha’s “attention gym” metaphor reframes mental training as cognitive strength conditioning, with fMRI evidence proving mindfulness increases gray matter density in attention networks.

3. Systemic Drivers of Attention Bankruptcy

Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus adopts a sociological lens, identifying twelve interlocking factors eroding collective attention. His analysis of “surveillance capitalism’s acceleration feedback loop” reveals how platform algorithms punish deliberative content, favoring inflammatory material that hijacks limbic responses. Hari documents the 56% decline in average focus duration since 2004, tracing it to hyper-competitive work cultures enforcing constant connectivity.

Cal Newport’s Deep Work crystallizes the economic consequences, showing knowledge workers lose 2.1 hours daily to context switching. His “attention capital theory” quantifies the $785 billion annual productivity loss from shallow work in the U.S. alone. Newport’s ethnographic studies of “attention blacksmiths”—from Jung’s Bollingen Tower retreat to Bill Gates’ Think Weeks—provide a blueprint for institutional deep work policies.

4. Reclaiming Cognitive Agency: Strategies Across Scales

Chris Bailey’s Hyperfocus introduces dual-mode attention management, differentiating deliberate concentration (hyperfocus) from creative incubation (scatterfocus). His “attention inventory” technique—tracking 147 discrete cognitive states over 21 days—enables personalized focus optimization. Bailey’s “20% distraction budgeting” framework permits strategic mind-wandering while protecting core deep work blocks.

At the organizational level, Mark’s “attention-aware workplace” model proposes architectural solutions:

• Kinetic workstations with treadmill desks to leverage motor-cognitive coupling
• “Focus havens” implementing variable acoustics for different attention modes
• Meeting protocols enforcing “monotasking zones” without digital devices

Nelson-Field’s industry reforms advocate for:

• Attention-weighted advertising metrics replacing CPM/CPC models
• Privacy-preserving attention analytics through federated learning systems
• Co-regulated attention markets with platform liability for attention harm

5.  The Path Forward: From Extraction to Stewardship

Hayes’ policy blueprint in The Sirens’ Call proposes radical interventions:

• Algorithmic transparency mandates under an FDA-style regulatory body
• Attention rights frameworks classifying cognitive intrusion as workplace harassment
• Digital public infrastructure alternatives to surveillance-based platforms

Concurrently, Jha’s neuroplasticity research proves that 6 weeks of mindfulness training can increase attentional control by 39%, offering scalable solutions for education systems. When combined with Newport’s “digital minimalism” protocols—shown to reduce screen time by 31% without productivity loss—these approaches chart a course toward sustainable attention ecosystems.

The convergence of these works reveals an urgent truth: attention stewardship must become the defining skill of the digital century. As Hari concludes, “Just as we learned to filter water, we must now learn to filter focus—or drown in the cognitive pollution of our age”. The solutions exist; what remains is the collective will to implement them at scale.

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Books Summary – 2

I also asked DeepSeek for a summary of the ideas from the recent books on Attention and applicability for marketing

The books listed offer profound insights into the modern attention crisis, blending personal strategies with societal critiques. Below are the most salient ideas relevant to addressing marketing’s attention recession:

1. Attention as a Commodity

Chris Hayes, The Sirens’ Call

• Core Idea: Attention has become the 21st century’s most exploited resource, mined by tech platforms through relentless notifications and algorithmic feeds.
• Relevance: Brands are forced to “rent” attention from adtech giants, mirroring Hayes’ critique of attention commodification. His call to reclaim agency over attention aligns with building owned engagement channels.

Dr. Karen Nelson-Field, The Attention Economy

• Core Idea: Attention must be measured not by impressions but by quality—duration, emotional resonance, and cognitive engagement.
• Relevance: Shifts the focus from “reach” to “impact,” urging brands to prioritize metrics like time-spent and recall over clicks.

2. The Fragmented Mind

Gloria Mark, Attention Span

• Core Idea: Digital multitasking reduces average focus time to 47 seconds per task, eroding productivity and satisfaction.
• Relevance: Brands compete in a landscape where consumers’ fractured attention demands hyper-relevant, bite-sized interactions (e.g., Microns).

Johann Hari, Stolen Focus

• Core Idea: Attention deficits stem from systemic issues—endless scrolling, workplace burnout, and profit-driven tech design.
• Relevance: Marketing’s reliance on interruptive ads exacerbates the problem. Hari’s solution—designing “attention-protective” environments—supports owned channels like NeoMails.

3. Restoring Focus

Amishi P. Jha, Peak Mind

• Core Idea: Mindfulness training (12 minutes/day) strengthens attentional control by rewiring neural pathways.
• Relevance: Brands can borrow this principle, creating daily “mindful moments” (e.g., gamified quizzes in emails) to deepen engagement.

Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus

• Core Idea: “Hyperfocus” occurs when we channel attention intentionally, minimizing distractions.
• Relevance: Interactive AMP emails and Atomic Rewards incentivize focused engagement, turning passive readers into active participants.

Cal Newport, Deep Focus

• Core Idea: Deep work requires eliminating shallow tasks and structuring time for uninterrupted concentration.
• Relevance: Brands must reduce “noise” in communications—fewer generic blasts, more personalized, value-driven content.

4. Systemic Solutions

Cross-Book Synthesis:

• Personal Habits: Jha and Bailey emphasize individual practices (mindfulness, time-blocking) to combat distraction.
• Structural Change: Hayes and Hari argue for redesigning tech ecosystems to prioritize human well-being over engagement metrics.

Marketing Implications:

• Owned Channels: Build “attention sanctuaries” (e.g., NeoN’s authenticated network) where engagement is voluntary and rewarding.
• Value Exchange: Atomic Rewards and Microns align with Hari’s call to “pay for attention” directly, bypassing adtech intermediaries.

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Actionable Takeaways for Marketers

1. Prioritize Quality Over Quantity: Measure attention via depth (time, interaction) rather than reach.
2. Leverage Mindfulness Principles: Design micro-engagements (e.g., daily puzzles) that reward focused attention.
3. Build Ethical Ecosystems: Use authenticated networks (NeoN) to create mutually beneficial attention exchanges.
4. Reduce Cognitive Load: Replace generic ads with hyper-personalized, AMP-powered experiences that respect users’ time.

By synthesizing these insights, brands can transition from renting attention to cultivating it—transforming the $500 billion AdWaste crisis into a loyalty-building opportunity.

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Attention Solutions – 1

The Attention Recession represents the root cause of marketing’s AdWaste crisis. As consumers tune out brand communications, relationships deteriorate, leading to expensive reacquisition cycles. Breaking free from this pattern requires a comprehensive approach focused on rebuilding attention bridges. The following innovations offer practical solutions to reconnect with audiences, transform engagement, and eliminate wasteful spending.

1. NeoMails: Building Reliable Hotlines

The concept of NeoMails represents a fundamental reimagining of email as a reliable, daily engagement channel rather than a one-way broadcast medium. By transforming the inbox into an interactive, value-driven destination, NeoMails solve the “No Hotline” problem that forces brands into expensive reacquisition.

A. Atomic Rewards (Mu)

Atomic Rewards address a core truth: attention deserves compensation. Rather than paying intermediaries for customer attention, brands can reward consumers directly for their engagement:

• Subject Line Incentives: Small rewards (Mu) embedded in subject lines create anticipation, driving open rates from single digits to much higher numbers by triggering curiosity and perceived value
• Progressive Earning: Rewards accumulate through consistent engagement, creating habit-forming behaviour patterns
• Network Effects: As more brands adopt Mu, consumers develop a “collection” mindset, increasing overall engagement across participating brands
• Attention Currency: Mu becomes a universal “attention currency” that consumers can earn across multiple brands and redeem through raffles or other reward mechanics

The psychological power of Mu stems from immediate gratification combined with longer-term accumulation, similar to loyalty programmes but focused on attention rather than purchases.

B. Microns (Value-Driven Microexperiences)

Microns transform emails from information vehicles into interactive, enriching experiences:

• 15-60 Second “Brain Gain”: Short quizzes, puzzles, or interactive content provide genuine value, combating “brain rot” from endless scrolling
• Daily Habit Formation: Consistent delivery creates anticipation and engagement rituals
• Progressive Profiling: Interactive elements gather zero-party data while providing entertainment, creating a fair value exchange
• Wrapper Architecture: Microns serve as “engagement wrappers” around traditional brand content, securing attention before delivering commercial messages

These micro-experiences create a psychological shift: customers begin actively seeking brand communications rather than avoiding them, fundamentally altering the attention dynamic.

C. ActionAds (In-Place Advertising)

ActionAds transform email from a cost centre into a profit engine by enabling seamless in-email transactions:

• Frictionless Commerce: Customers can browse, select, and purchase products without leaving their inbox, eliminating conversion barriers
• Contextual Relevance: Powered by zero-party data, these ads feel like personalised recommendations rather than interruptions
• Revenue Generation: Brands can monetise their email engagement, hosting relevant third-party promotions from non-competing partners
• Identity-Based Targeting: Unlike cookie-based advertising, ActionAds use authenticated identity (with consent) for precise, privacy-compliant targeting

The combination of these elements transforms email from an outdated push channel into a dynamic, interactive platform that consumers actively engage with. When implemented together, open rates can climb from single digits to 40-60%, with engagement times increasing from seconds to minutes—fundamentally changing the economics of customer relationships.

2. N=1 Personalisation

Generic messaging creates the “Not For Me” problem that drives customers into dormancy. True N=1 personalisation—treating each customer as a unique individual rather than a segment member—creates relevance that commands attention.

A. AI Twins (Segment and Singular)

AI Twins create digital replicas of customers at both segment and individual levels:

• Segment (Madtech) Twins: Aggregate customer understanding at the cohort level, identifying patterns and preferences for similar groups
• Singular Twins (MyTwin): Individual-level digital replicas that understand specific preferences, behaviours, and needs
• Continuous Learning: Twins evolve with each interaction, developing increasingly accurate predictions of customer preferences
• Conversation-Based Understanding: Through natural language interactions, Twins can gather explicit preferences without intrusive questioning
• Predictive Engagement: Twins anticipate needs before customers express them, enabling proactive personalisation

AI Twins create a revolutionary shift from demographics-based segmentation to genuine individual understanding, making every communication feel personally crafted.

B. AI Marketing Agents

AI Marketing Agents automate personalisation at scale, eliminating the operational complexity that previously made individual-level engagement impossible:

• Content Agents: Create personalised messaging variants for different customer contexts
• Campaign Agents: Orchestrate multi-channel engagement sequences optimised for individual preferences
• Journey Agents: Adapt customer experiences in real-time based on behaviour signals
• Testing Agents: Continuously evaluate messaging effectiveness, optimising for engagement
• Analytics Agents: Process customer signals to identify patterns and opportunities

Together, these specialised agents form an “AI Marketing Department” that can execute thousands of personalised campaigns simultaneously without proportional staffing increases. This solves the operational bottleneck that prevented true personalisation despite its known effectiveness.

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Attention Solutions – 2

3. NeoN: The Attention Exchange

NeoN reimagines advertising by creating a direct brand-to-brand attention exchange that eliminates platform intermediaries:

• Authenticated Identity: Uses PII (with consent) for precise targeting, eliminating the waste of cookie-based approaches
• Direct Brand Collaboration: Enables brands to reach dormant customers through partners’ active engagement channels
• Privacy-Compliant Data Usage: Employs “clean room” technology to match audiences without exposing personal data
• Performance-Based Pricing: Aligns costs with actual results rather than auction-based inflation
• Reacquisition Alternative: Provides a cost-effective channel for reactivating dormant customers without platform fees

NeoN creates a superior alternative to expensive platform-based reacquisition, addressing the “No Alternative” problem that locks brands into wasteful adtech spending. By collaborating directly, brands can share audience attention in a mutually beneficial ecosystem that reduces costs while improving targeting precision.

4. Progency: Operationalising Attention Solutions

The Progency model addresses the fundamental “Who Will Do It?” problem that prevents martech adoption despite its known benefits:

A. Martech Performance Agency

• Outcome-Based Model: Compensation tied to attention and engagement metrics rather than software fees
• End-to-End Responsibility: Full accountability for customer reactivation and retention
• Focus on “Rest” Customers: Specialised attention on the overlooked middle segment between “Best” (already engaged) and “Test” (fully dormant)
• Incentive Alignment: Success fees based on incremental revenue, creating perfect alignment with brand objectives

B. PEAK Framework

The PEAK methodology creates a comprehensive system for attention optimisation:

• Product/Platform: Proprietary martech tools for attention capture and engagement
• Experts: Specialised teams with deep expertise in attention economics
• AI Agents: Autonomous systems for personalisation and optimisation at scale
• Kaizen: Continuous improvement methodology for ongoing attention enhancement

Progency transforms martech from a software expense into a performance-driven profit centre, similar to how adtech operates but focused on retention rather than acquisition.

Additional Attention Solutions

Beyond these core innovations, several complementary approaches further address the Attention Recession:

1. Attention-First Metrics

• Earned Growth: Measuring organic referrals and repeat engagement rather than paid acquisition
• Attention Quality Score: Evaluating engagement depth rather than just quantity
• Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): Prioritising long-term relationship value over short-term clicks
• Reacquisition Rate: Tracking the percentage of customers requiring paid reacquisition, and reducing this to near-zero

2. Attention-Protective Environments

• Distraction-Free Interfaces: Simplified, focused design that eliminates cognitive overload
• Value-Driven Communications: Prioritising genuine value over interruption-based messaging
• Permission-Based Engagement: Building relationships based on consent rather than intrusion
• Attention Budgeting: Respecting customers’ limited cognitive resources

3. Habit-Forming Engagement

• Daily Engagement Rituals: Creating predictable, rewarding interaction patterns
• Variable Reward Mechanics: Introducing elements of surprise to drive continued engagement
• Progress Indicators: Showing advancement toward goals or rewards
• Community Reinforcement: Using social dynamics to strengthen engagement habits

Integration: The Attention Ecosystem

While each solution addresses specific aspects of the Attention Recession, their true power emerges when implemented as an integrated ecosystem:

1. NeoMails with Atomic Rewards create reliable, daily engagement channels
2. AI Twins and Marketing Agents ensure every interaction feels personally relevant
3. NeoN provides cost-effective reactivation for dormant customers
4. Progency delivers the operational expertise to implement and optimise the entire system

This integrated approach creates a virtuous cycle: better engagement reduces dormancy, which decreases reacquisition needs, freeing resources for enhanced personalisation, which further improves engagement. The result is a sustainable alternative to the vicious cycle of attention decay and expensive reacquisition that drives AdWaste.

Conclusion: From Attention Recession to Attention Prosperity

The $500 billion AdWaste crisis stems directly from the Attention Recession. By implementing these solutions, brands can fundamentally transform their relationship with customer attention—moving from costly, intermittent acquisition to consistent, valuable engagement.

This shift represents more than just cost savings; it creates a new marketing paradigm where attention is earned through value rather than bought through interruption. Brands that master these approaches will not only eliminate AdWaste but build lasting competitive advantages through stronger customer relationships, lower acquisition costs, and new revenue streams.

The future of marketing belongs to those who solve the attention problem at its source rather than merely treating its symptoms. These innovations provide the practical pathway to break free from the attention recession and build a more sustainable, profitable marketing ecosystem.