Let’s dive into the concept of an ‘attention economy’ and why we can consider attention to be, in many ways, a new currency. In the process, we’ll also explore the engagement tools and design elements used to foster ongoing engagement and sustained monetisation.
Why attention is the new currency
Digital platforms earn money through more than just selling products and subscriptions; they can also profit from the time people spend on their platforms. How platforms profit from time spent varies by platform type, though there is a key overlapping profit-earning opportunity found across all: ads. From social media to streaming services, shopping platforms and everything in between, ads are a common revenue stream. For each ad sold to advertisers, these platforms profit, and the more time people spend on a platform, the more ads can be displayed, generating more profit.
For example, Amazon earns money not just from selling products, but also by offering merchants the opportunity to pay to be at the top of search results. Amazon can earn revenue even when users don’t make a purchase—every time people browse the website or app, Amazon makes money. In other words, the more platforms can hold our attention, the more potential opportunities to earn money there are.
The more time people spend on platforms also allows companies to collect more data about their users, allowing for more targeted and effective ads. This, in turn, leads to the ads being more effective and attracting greater advertiser interest.
Since our attention is so valuable, companies craft their digital platforms to be appealing to us to increase the amount of time we spend using them and encourage repeated use. Some features that grab and hold our attention longer include auto-scrolling feeds and videos, push notifications, personalised algorithms and endless scrolling. These features add a sense of urgency and play on our fear of missing out (FOMO). They also trigger a dopamine release that makes an experience feel good and rewarding, making us more likely to engage in the behaviour again—whether that’s binge-watching something on Netflix, scrolling through social media or shopping online.
Offers as engagement tools
Beyond the built-in features of platforms, companies have another powerful tool at their disposal to help them capture and retain our attention: promotional offers. Here we’ll break down popular offers that enhance engagement and explain how they work.
Free trials and freemium offers
Free trials and freemium offers reduce and often completely remove the barrier to entry in trying out a new service or platform, making signing up easy. This makes people more likely to sign up and take a test drive of a platform. Offering the service for free highlights its value, making us more likely to continue using and engaging with it in the future, even if we need to pay for access. The music streaming platform Spotify is a well-known example of this. It offers a free version of its service supported by ads; users enjoy it free of charge, while the company still profits.
Discounts, deals and free offers
From free shipping and delivery to buy-one-get-one offers, deals can capture our attention and bring us back to a platform, allowing us and the company to benefit from the offer. These offers work by creating that FOMO feeling, encouraging us to take action quickly so that we don’t miss out on the offer and regret it later. These offers are particularly effective when they include an element of personalisation, such as a birthday discount or offers based on past order history.
Loyalty and referral programmes
Loyalty and referral programmes can capture our attention in various ways, including giving us milestones to work towards and exclusive offers that we look forward to accessing. They combine the power of personalisation and urgency, and build on it to make us feel more of an emotional connection to a brand or platform. For instance, tier-based programmes encourage increased spending on a platform or service to move up a tier for exclusive perks and discounts that higher tiers get, such as those found at Sephora’s Beauty Insiders program.
Sweepstakes
Sweepstakes can be a powerful motivator that encourages us to spend more time on a platform just for the possibility of winning something—be it discounts, free products or cash prizes. Users can enter sweepstakes by engaging with platform activities. For example, spending time taking part in activities on a platform, such as beating a level in a game or testing a new feature, can be rewarded with a sweepstakes offer. It’s a way of harnessing our attention with an instant reward.
Where online casinos fit in
The four methods explored in this article show us how companies vie for our attention in the saturated digital marketplace. The examples primarily focused on offers we’re familiar with from e-commerce and streaming platforms, but they can be applied across industries, including online casinos. Like other digital platforms, online gambling platforms can profit from our attention—even when users aren’t actively spending money. In the online casino industry, these offers are particularly evident in user acquisition strategies.
Take, for instance, BetMGM promotions that entice new players to test the platform. Like other casinos, BetMGM offers deposit matching and free spins on certain games for new players, offering free gameplay with more opportunities for winning cash. And like other digital platforms, such as Spotify, they allow new users to try the platform while minimising the perceived risk of spending. It shows the value of the platform—entertainment and fun—and encourages users to spend more time on it in the long term by facilitating free play.
For online casinos, promotions aren’t about promoting spending—they’re about promoting time on the app, which emphasises the importance of the attention economy. These promotions include game-like mechanics that keep us engaged. They add to the gaming experience by motivating us to engage in behaviours that enhance it, such as encouraging us to test out a game we may not otherwise try.
Designing for the distracted
From gaming at online casinos to scrolling social media, there are a lot of demands on our attention when we’re online, making it easy for us to become distracted and our attention to wander to other platforms and avenues of entertainment. For this reason, many platforms place a great deal of resources into designing features that reduce distractions and keep the platform top of mind. There are a few common tactics used to maintain user focus on a specific platform, including gamification and snackable content.
Gamification
Gamification turns our experience of online platforms into an engaging game that gives us goals to work towards and instant gratification for meeting small milestones. These goals are small and easy to achieve, such as setting up an account, logging in daily and trying new features or games. Essentially, they reward us for engaging in behaviours we already want to engage in, making it even more likely that we’ll return to the platform, benefiting the company with our hard-to-earn attention. By keeping goals small, gamification also plays into the idea of snackable content.
Snackable content
Small, easily digestible content delivers instant gratification, which releases that feel-good chemical dopamine in our brains, producing positive feelings towards a platform and making us want to engage with it again in the future. This natural tendency is why it’s easy to spend hours scrolling through TikToks and Reels, even if we didn’t plan to spend time scrolling.
Conclusion
Of course, the desire to capitalise on the attention economy isn’t without ethical concerns. Designing to retain people’s attention raises concerns relating to addiction, mental health and misinformation. As our attention becomes more and more valuable in the eyes of companies, our autonomy and wellness must not be forgotten in the process. Becoming an informed consumer can help minimise these risks, alongside government regulations and policies, something that in the UK is often a hot topic.