understanding the economics of time and attention, which are the ultimate scarce goods
What’s the difference between a search service and a service perfectly targeting informative advertising to its users? Susan Wojcicki, Google VP, Product Management, recently stated: Google’s advertising business was founded on the core principle that advertising should deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. This is very similar to our … Continue reading emotions secure advertising's future
Crime and punishment has featured prominently in the rise of mass media. The first book published in Boston was A Wicked Man’s Portion (1675), a sermon that Increase Mather preached at the execution of two men for murder. About this time in England, the Ordinary (minister) of Newgate Prison began publishing accounts of prisoners who … Continue reading bleeding leads mass media
For more than four months, hundreds of persons a week have probably viewed a display of minerals and meteorites exhibited at the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, DC. A collection of minerals and meteorites were part of James Smithson’s bequest to the United States for founding the Smithsonian as an institution “for the increase and diffusion … Continue reading a peculiar advantage of Wikipedia
Most television watching is best modeled as a two-stage decision process. First, a person decides to watch television. That means the person sits on a couch and stares vacantly at a large screen a few yards away. Then the person decides what to watch. That means choosing among current, salient video programming offerings. These two … Continue reading television serves couch potatoes
The U.S. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) this fall will release another report lamenting the decline of literary reading. From the late seventeenth century through the early twentieth century, many cultural leaders would have applauded a decline in reading of popular novels. Now, however, such a decline is a cause for grave concern. Fiction … Continue reading reading gender gaps, or, reading at risk, seriously