Continuous Partial Attention

continuous partial attention marketing

Post-Multitasking’s Impact on Marketing

Multitasking is not a new phenomenon. As marketers, we want to believe that our message is so strong, so engaging that people will stop what they are doing and give their undivided attention to us. But the reality of the digital world is that people are continually looking for the next thing they are going to read, watch, listen to, before they have even completed what they are currently consuming. This kind of digital multitasking is having an impact on the effect of our marketing. Our thumb is perpetually in motion, while our minds are suffering from continuous partial attention. Thinking about continuous scrolling pages, the never-ending stream of content, there is a constant desire of being unfulfilled, that we may be missing out on something or the next thing that will fulfill our needs is right around the corner.

Enter the term “Continuous Partial Attention”, coined by Linda Stone in 1998, and it is one of the most important things to understand as a modern marketer. In his 2005 book Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, author Steven Berlin Johnson says “it usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream…That lets you cast a wider net, but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish.” A decade later, and that quote is all the more relevant.

Stone also says, “In a 24/7, always-on world, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of being unfulfilled. We are so accessible, we’re inaccessible.” We have the means to reach people with hyper-targeted precision of who they are, where they are, what they do, where they work, what their interests are, and more. But they are so inundated with options competing for their attention that getting through the different layers of filters the brain has put in place is the ultimate challenge.

According to The Next Web, Facebook recently experimented with floating videos, so users were able to keep scrolling through their feed while the video was fixed in the corner on their screen. The idea came directly from users who expressed the desire for this functionality. The more intuitive an experience is within the context of our actual behavior, the greater the chance it will be discovered. Imagine a TV spot that communicated one small thing, even if it -was being fast-forwarded through.

Adapting Marketing Efforts for Continuous Partial Attention

Knowing our users are often in this state of multitasking, how does that impact what we do with our marketing? There are several considerations that should be addressed:

  1. Be realistic about how people are consuming your message and adapt your content for those scenarios. Understand that the medium you may be utilizing may lend itself to more cases of partial attention. Someone browsing a social feed is in a much different state of mind than someone actively seeking out information through search.
  2. Be bold. If someone’s first instinct is to start scrolling, and skim through information, what is going to capture attention? Think bold graphics, short copy, and a clear call-to-action.
  3. Don’t sacrifice clarity for cleverness.  People don’t want to work hard to try and figure out what you are trying to tell them.
  4. Start short and earn more. The audience doesn’t owe you their attention so you always need to give them a reason to engage deeper.
  5. Keep the message focused. Concentrate on the one thing you want to get across.
  6. Have the answers to “So What?” and “What’s in it for me?” and make sure they are paid off quickly.
  7. If what you are trying to communicate is a complex idea, there needs to be enough of a frequency of the message to be able to get someone to start to be cognizant of it. Also, sequenced messaging can help introduce new ideas to those that now have general awareness of what you’ve previously communicated.

We certainly strive to rise above Continuous Partial Attention and capture people’s attention with our messages. But we don’t often have a captive audience that thinks our message is as important as we do. We can, however, take a step back and make sure we’re grounded in the reality of the setting of how our message is being consumed, to be as effective as possible with how we execute.