What is Attention Economy?

Attention Economy

"Attention economy is a marketplace where consumers agree to receives services in exchange for their attention. The ultimate purpose is of course to sell something to the consumer, but the selling does not need to be direct and does not need to be instant." 
By Alex Iskold, for more information

"The idea behind the Attention Economy is to create a marketplace where consumers are happy, because if they are shown relevant information - then retailers are happy too, because happy consumers spend money!" 

By Alex Iskold, for more information 

"If everyone has everyone’s attention the value of attention is nullified. Thus to avoid mental bankruptcy, navigating an “attention economy” means saving, investing and being cunningly conscientious of your own attention. If you treated your attention as a monetary value, would you be considered broke, middle class or well-invested?"
By James Shelley, for more information

"The Attention Economy is a marketplace where consumers agree to receive services in exchange for their attention. Examples include personalized news, personalized search, alerts and recommendations to buy. Note that the Attention Economy is different from the traditional meaning of an economy, because it isn't about buying and selling - although ultimately those things may occur."

By Richard MacManus, for more information

Get the idea of what is attention economy?

From what I interpreted, attention economy is a marketplace which use indirect way of dealing, they attract consumer attention, by relevancy strategy. Consumer tend to read something there is relevant to them and the chances of buying the products or services is higher. 

For example, let's say I want to Google search "eating oatmeal", I may realize other than what I want to know, there are some others relevant result information shown. There are maybe some people comment about which brand of oatmeal is the best, advertiser might insect some interactive digital ads at the corner and so on.