The Great Attention Recession

What McKinsey’s new research really tells us about the future of brand storytelling.

Every so often, you come across a piece of research that confirms what it feels like you’ve been screaming into the void about for years.

This summer, slide deck merchants, McKinsey, shared a study on the state of the attention economy. It is one of the first studies to quantify something that storytellers have always known:

Not all attention is created equal.

TL;DR: The attention economy is collapsing under the weight of content. Brands that win won’t chase eyeballs; they’ll build lasting connections through quality experiences that resonate with their audience.

The problem nobody wants to admit

All marketers love big numbers: views, impressions, reach. We are told we live in the attention economy, and these are the markers of attention, so this makes sense. The problem is that at the scale we're reaching, the world’s attention is a somewhat finite resource.

McKinsey’s data show that over the past decade, the total time people spend consuming media has grown by just 1 to 2 per cent a year, even though content output has exploded.

“In the last year, amateur creators uploaded 25,000× more content to YouTube than all TV networks and streamers combined.”

Let that sink in for a minute.

The supply of content has gone stratospheric. The demand, actual human focus, has effectively flatlined.

If this is an attention economy, then we have one hell of a recession going on.

The Attention Equation

McKinsey surveyed 7,000 people and built a model explaining why some attention drives value but most doesn’t.

They call it the Attention Equation:

Value of Attention = Commercial Quotient × Attention Quotient

Commercial quotient: traditional drivers: content scarcity/uniqueness, audience size, platform capabilities - eg. event vs. TikTok vs. podcast.

Attention quotient: the quality of the attention.

This is made up of two sub-factors:

 o Level of focus: how immersed/undistracted the consumer is.

 o Job to be done: why the consumer is engaging.

When you multiply (or otherwise combine) these, you get an estimated “value of attention” metric for different media formats. The model explains >75% of the variance in monetisation for non-live media.

Focus × Intent drives the difference between empty views and meaningful engagement.

Which is a grand way of saying – if you’re not paying attention, then the value of the content is going to be drastically reduced.  This is important because while the vanity reach metrics that everyone is chasing can be high, the commercial return is crashing.

The average American now spends 13 hours a day engaging with media, much of it while doing something else. 2/3 of consumers browse other apps while watching TV.

We have trillions of views, billions of ‘engagements’, but no one is really watching.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Even small increases in focus on the content can lead to significant increases in returns.

For instance:

“A 10 percent rise in focus leads to a 17 percent rise in spend.”

The most focused audiences spend twice as much as distracted ones. In order to understand the different types of attention that the audience are bringing to their watching, McKinsey classified five different reasons that people consume content…

The quality of attention

McKinsey identified five “jobs to be done” behind why we give attention:

1. Love – to enjoy something deeply.

2. Learn – to be informed or inspired.

3. Connect – to feel part of something bigger.

4. Relax – to switch off.

5. Background – to fill the silence.

Only the first three — love, learning, and connection — produce high-value attention. The other two are really just people creating noise to fill the background as they go about their lives.

When you look at the creative landscape through that lens, it’s obvious why so much marketing feels hollow.

“The entire marketing industrial complex has been optimised for what can be measured and not what should be measured.”

That makes complete sense. We tend to measure only what we can easily quantify. In online content, that’s views, likes, shares.

I feel like I have spent most of the last two decades trying to develop good effectiveness tracking methodology for video content, and I have found what everyone else who has looked into it has discovered… It’s really hard.

Attribution is difficult. Soft effects like improved brand affinity are hard. Measuring multi-touch effects is hard. But that is where the real effectiveness lies.

Engagement metrics are vanity signals; real impact is emotional resonance. Chasing the wrong metrics is not only burning out the dopamine-addled audience, it’s short-changing brands by not giving them the return their investments should be making.

Proof that emotion pays

McKinsey found that “super users” — the people who consume the most content — aren’t necessarily the ones spending money. Only 36% of heavy consumers are heavy spenders.

The key difference between “super users” and “super spenders” is focus.

When people are emotionally engaged, they choose to watch, learn, or feel something. When they feel connected, they buy, subscribe, advocate, and stay.

This research explains why it is essential to create quality, compelling video stories. For years, we’ve argued that video is the most powerful tool for building human connection online.

“We have to stop trying to chase eyeballs and start creating consistent work which captures hearts and minds.”

The suits and the storytellers

What I love about this research is that it bridges two worlds — the suits and the storytellers. For many working in the corporate world, assets like video have been seen as a nice-to-have. Tools for fanning vanity and ego. Now we can understand why, because that is exactly how so much of it is used.

The McKinsey study has given the entire industry of quality visual storytellers a framework for the case for video as one of the most powerful tools in any CEO’s arsenal. They have given the creative industry a vocabulary, from a trusted source, that we can use in the boardroom.

So what can we learn?

5 takeaways for corporate communicators

1. Stop chasing reach. The attention economy is flooded with content, but human focus hasn’t grown. Winning brands will stop measuring success in views and impressions, and start competing on depth - how much their audience actually cares and remembers.
2. Design for focus and intent. McKinsey’s data shows that why and how people watch determines value. Before creating anything, ask: How will the audience love, learn, or connect with this piece of content?
3. Measure emotion, not clicks. A small rise in focus creates outsized returns - 10% more focus drives 17% more spend. Engagement metrics are vanity; emotional response is value. Replace “likes” with signals of resonance, recall, and trust.
4. Lead with heart. Internal and leadership comms are the new brand front line. People don’t rally behind messages; they rally behind meaning. Craft stories that connect emotionally and make the audience feel part of something.
5. Bring storytelling into the boardroom. McKinsey has given creatives a language that executives understand: Value of Attention = Commercial × Emotional Focus. Storytelling isn’t decoration — it’s economic leverage. It has to be approached as a platform, not just project by project.

For more information, check out...

McKinsey & Company (2025): “The Attention Equation — Winning the Right Battles for Consumer Attention.

Thanks for reading. What do you think about this? Is this the key evidence we've been looking for? Or is it just another report that will sink beneath the waves?