Attention bartering – empowering contextonomics as an alternative currency
Barter = exchange of goods or services for other goods or services.
The internet facilitates the creation of context based marketplaces that are economically driven and have built in reward motivations and incentives for collaboration. Digital bartering through internet based platforms is a great bartering platforms facilitator, due to the ease of use, immediate accessibility and the transactional capability of connecting people with needs to other individuals or providers, capable of satisfying these needs.
The simplest form of digital bartering was at the hardware level – bartering idle computing resources.
Goggle is a kind of a digital barter enabler. Google reorganizes information to make it accessible through a specific individual search prism based on users’ queries. To users, it provides search results and thus empowers free access to content. In return it uses its search platform to enable advertisers accessibility to users and derives from that its ad based revenue streams.
In the era of direct conversations, link back from content, blogs and texting is also a way of bartering, although a more fluid one. Still it creates an increasing returns cycle of introductions to relevant content and all participants benefit.
Attention bartering means exchanging consumption of digital goods or services with attention – a more sophisticated form of digital bartering. Attention bartering is a new manifestation of the long tail economy.
Historically, in traditional media, ad related and content bartering was done mainly between corporates. Web based, context oriented bartering can be between direct individuals, through peer to peer mechanisms, or through providers or 3rd parties.
Digital content consumption platforms empower the ability to select personalized commercial targeting for the same content item by incorporating a variety of aggregation and distribution channels with different value adding chains and financial reconciliation mechanisms.
It empowers new mechanism of exchange, new kinds of aggregators. A converged unified TVIP based, social media 2.0 environment allows for diversified food chains around the same content items. To name a few:
- A pay-per-view viewership of a sports match with additional prior matches of the player who scored highest or the winning team for different bundling with targeted ads and related commercial offerings for diferent price options.
- A choice of a pay per view movie, leading to additional movie offerings with the same actors/director, combined with all sorts of monitory or context + ad or merchandising bundling.
- Aggregators and providers will have banks of advertising, ads will be pulled and the advertiser rewarded for each ad sent in a pull model to a viewer.
- Users can allow companies use their profiles or data for market research, targeting and get rewarded directly as part of the food chain created around them by content offerings, digital coupons, merit points…..
From the economic sense of the web service provider this means that each transaction executed by any of its consumers, can be monetized in full and paid directly or traded, fully or partially, for alternative service. One consumer, one movie to watch for 50% discount + 3 targeted ads or one movie to watch full price – same value.
Icentricity calls for a reversal in the foundation of transactions, anchoring it on the user negotiating with a cloud of vendors of similar offering through an array of alternative paying methods rather than a vendor negotiating with a cloud of users.
From an Icentered point of view, there is a large inventory of providers and an array of bartering options from which to choose. For the user one movie + 3 targeted ads that spell 50% discount on actual payment + attention allocation to ads that may targeted to relevant interests and lifestyle, or one movie full price no ads (assuming same cost) is not necessarily the same. Yet, choice, value and preferences are individual.
