“Another day of staring at the big screen while scrolling through my little screen as a reward for staring at the medium screen all week,” or so the meme goes.
The joke about the big-little-medium screens has made the rounds for years, and for good reason: It’s a sharp take on our hyperdigital lives. We bounce among TVs, phones, and laptops day after day, often using one screen to “take a break” from another.
For Gen Z especially, media multitasking is the norm. It is so prevalent in people’s professional and personal lives that, on average, Americans of all ages now spend roughly 13 hours a day engaging with media. That’s just one finding in a new report about the attention economy from McKinsey Senior Partners Kabir Ahuja and Marc Brodherson and coauthors, who developed an “attention equation” to measure the true value of consumers’ time spent with media.
In today’s media-saturated world, capturing eyeballs isn’t enough to fully capture consumer attention. Instead, brands need to earn “valuable attention,” which the report identifies as a mix of focus (how deeply someone is engaged with content) and intent (why they’re engaging in the first place).
That means that anyone with a stake in the attention economy—brands, but also influencers and platforms—can no longer rely on long-used metrics (such as impressions, time spent, or audience size) to determine whether consumers are engaged enough to buy their product or service. A scroll isn’t always a signal, and a click doesn’t guarantee connection, especially with Gen Z.
After surveying more than 7,000 people globally, the authors found that Gen Zers aren’t less focused than other consumers; they’re just focused on different things. Consider this: Gen Z and boomers report similar levels of average attention, but where that attention goes varies. For Gen Z, peak focus happens during video games; for boomers, it’s while reading the newspaper. The biggest gap? Live sports. Boomers are locked in at the stadium, while Gen Z is a bit more focused when they watch from the couch.
For Gen Z, how they engage also depends on why they’re engaging in the first place. Sometimes they’re consuming media as passive entertainment. Other times, they are trying to learn, connect with others, or seek inspiration. Understanding their purpose for consuming media is critical to meeting them in the right moment with the right message.
Three rules can help players in the attention economy better reach Gen Z:
1. Context is everything
Tailor messaging to the moment. The report found that if an advertisement resonates with a consumer (for example, a consumer thinks, “This ad is meant for me”) and the context in which it’s placed makes sense (for example, a funny ad appears alongside a funny show), the ad has a better chance of driving sales compared with an ad that doesn’t do this.
2. Rethink segmentation
Instead of treating Gen Z as one big group (it’s standard practice to segment media consumers by demographics, income, and spend), it’s better to segment them based on their underlying attitudes and beliefs. The research identified seven distinct consumer segments based on Gen Zers’ perspectives on content consumption; among them: entertainment omnivores, immersion seekers, tech-savvy legacy viewers, and free-content browsers.
3. Look for underpriced pockets of high focus
Wherever the value of attention is greater than the cost of advertising, there’s an opportunity to advertise in new ways that resonate with Gen Z (particularly in video games). But these ads should not affect the consumer experience.
The winners in this new attention equation? Not those who shout the loudest but those who show up in the right places and engage meaningfully with their audiences.
|
