"Ours is often called an information economy, but at a moment when access to information is virtually unlimited, our attention has become ultimate commodity. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of efforts to harvest our attention. This condition is not simply the by-product of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. Wu's narrative begins in the nineteenth century, when Benjamin Day discovered he could get rich selling newspapers for a penny. Subsequently, every new medium--from radio to television to Internet companies such as Google and Facebook--has attained commercial viability and immense riches by turning itself into an advertising platform. Since the early days, the basic business model of "attention merchants" has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your time, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Full of lively, unexpected storytelling and piercing insight, The Attention Merchants lays bare the true nature of a ubiquitous realy we can no longer afford to accept at face value"--Back cover.

Introduction: Here's the deal -- pt. I. Masters of blazing modernities. The first attention merchants ; The alchemist ; For king and country ; Demand engineering, scientific advertising, and what women want ; A long lucky run ; Not with a bang but with a whimper -- pt. II. The conquest of time and space. The invention of prime time ; The prince ; Total attention control, or the madness of crowds ; Peak attention, American style ; Prelude to an attentional revolt ; The great refusal ; Coda to an attentional revolution -- pt. III. The third screen. Email and the power of the check-in ; Invaders ; AOL pulls 'em in -- pt. IV. The importance of being famous. Establishment of the celebrity-industrial complex ; The Oprah model ; The panopticon -- pt. V. Won't be fooled again. The kingdom of content: this is how you do it ; Here comes everyone ; The rise of clickbait ; The place to be ; The importance of being microfamous ; The fourth screen and the mirror of Narcissus ; The web hits bottom ; A retreat and a revolt ; Who's boss here? ; An absorbing spectacle: the attention merchant turned president -- Epilogue: The human reclamation project.