Nearly two thirds (62%) of marketers say that capturing attention is now their biggest challenge, highlighting how competition for visibility has overtaken more traditional marketing goals in a crowded media landscape, according to Channel V Media.
The report ‘Tapping Into the Attention Economy: The State of PR & Marketing in a World Where Attention is Now Currency’, which surveyed 250 US marketing executives, revealed that what was once a relatively straightforward exercise in advertising and PR has become significantly more complex.
Closely behind attention is differentiation, with 60% of marketers citing it as a major pain point. Both now rank higher than more traditional priorities such as generating leads (52%) and driving user adoption (34%), underscoring a shift in what marketers are struggling with most.
The report points to three key structural pressures driving this shift: a surge in competing products, an expanding number of channels to market them and an overwhelming volume of content competing for audience attention.
In many categories, new products increasingly resemble existing ones, leaving consumers with little immediate basis on which to distinguish between them.
As a result, marketers are no longer just tasked with introducing products to market as they are also having to communicate subtle differences in increasingly compressed content formats, where nuance is harder to land and attention spans are shorter.
This challenge is particularly acute in sectors where the product is not immediately tangible or experienced before purchase. In these “invisible” categories, such as software and services, differentiation relies heavily on perception rather than direct product interaction.
The report notes that this dynamic is driving higher marketing investment in these sectors. For instance, 32% of professional services firms now report annual marketing budgets of $4m or more, as businesses spend more to stand out in markets where being noticed is becoming the primary barrier to growth.
Gretel Going, president of Channel V Media, said: “There is a reason we’re seeing a buying spree of traditional media and social media outlets right now: If you have people’s attention, you can influence them,
“Marketers fundamentally understand this logic. The first step in influencing audiences is getting their attention. The second–and increasingly more challenging–one is saying something different once you do.”
To read the full report, visit: Attention Economy PR Report – Channel V Media