Attention and Free Economies

with a focus on Google

By Narelle Absolom

Fundamental terms

Attention Economy Free Economy Often synonymous and usually

linked in terms of the fundamental economic basis of the interent

Attention is scarce The internet is

overflowing with information

Much of it is freely available

But without attention, getting ‘eyeballs’ to your information – how useful is it?

Image source: http://www.mediafuturist.com/2008/08/getting-paid-wi.html

Free Economy Sometimes, (in fact, often online)

you have to give your product or service away for free

Then you can make money later, through: Advertising Sponsorship Brand marketing

Google is Free… and Rich!

Google provides most of its products and services free to users

Yet it made $21billion last year! How is this possible?

Image source: http://phiyakushi.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/money_stack.jpg

Google the Survivor

Google was both clever and lucky It survived the dotcom crash by

applying non-traditional marketing methods

recruiting just the right people for the job

taking calculated risks

So Much Attention, So Little Time!

Google gathered a huge amount of attention very quickly. How? Why? Making a search engine that was

quick and worked as expected Building on its success constantly by

improving its search technology Not being “evil”

Show Me the Money!

Google made its money through advertising: AdSense applied relevant advertising

links to the top of keyword search results

AdWords was a pay-per-click auction model where companies could buy ads in search results sidebars

Household Name

Google became synonymous with search

You don’t “use a search engine” anymore, you “Google it”!

Image source: http://www.sevensheaven.nl/images/producten/illustration-illustratie_google-search_02.jpg

King of Information Google has its fingers in many

pies: Search Blogging Social networking Email Knowledge base Website creation and many more… Image source: http://b2b-marketingblog.com/tag/google/

Summary

Google is a great case study for attention and free economic models

Its products are essentially free, and the attention it gathers transform into revenue through advertising

Free + attention = money!

Full Article and References

For the full article, including references cited, please following this link:

http://sites.google.com/site/net205apples/home/attention-economy