It was once said that information is power. Today, attention has become the new global currency. Information has value only if it succeeds in attracting our attention, holding it long enough and influencing our decisions. In the economy of the 21st century, it is no longer only products, services or ideas that compete – it is the seconds of our attention.

The attention market has become the world’s largest and most valuable marketplace. Its main players are no longer only media organisations and advertisers. Today, our attention is bought by technology platforms, companies, political movements, influencers, algorithms and artificial intelligence. At the same time, we all unknowingly sell it – with every click, like, search, comment and every second spent in front of a screen.

The greatest paradox of the digital economy is that we are no longer merely users of platforms. We have also become their product. Our habits, interests, emotions and patterns of behaviour are transformed into data that provides the basis for accurately predicting our future decisions. The battle today is therefore no longer about information, but about predicting human behaviour.

Artificial intelligence is further changing the rules of the game. Algorithms no longer analyse only what we want today; they are trying to predict what we will want tomorrow. The attention market is evolving into an intention market. Companies are no longer buying advertising space alone – they are buying the opportunity to be present at the moment when an algorithm determines that we are most likely to make a particular decision.

Heading towards an intention market

Artificial intelligence is shifting the attention market towards an intention market, in which algorithms no longer track only what we want today, but increasingly seek to predict what we will want – and decide – tomorrow

This also raises serious ethical questions. Where does personalisation end and manipulation begin? How freely do we make decisions if digital systems shape the information we see? Are we still citizens capable of making independent decisions, or are we becoming consumers whose behaviour can be predicted with a high degree of certainty?

At the same time, the attention market is undergoing another transformation. Until recently, companies wanted to appear first in Google search results. Today, they want to become the first answer generated by ChatGPT or another AI assistant. This means that communication is moving from the world of search to the world of conversations with machines. A company’s reputation is no longer built solely through the media and social networks, but also through the answers generated by artificial intelligence.

A broader role for communication

In such a world, trust becomes the most valuable asset. Attention can be bought, but trust cannot. It is built over time through consistency, transparency and responsibility. That is why communication will play a much broader role in the future than ever before. Its primary mission will be to protect the credibility of organisations, institutions and society as a whole.

I believe that the coming decade will bring about a new economy – an economy of trust. In that economy, the most successful organisations will not be those that seek to attract the greatest amount of attention, but those that earn the greatest degree of trust.

In a world where artificial intelligence will generate an almost limitless volume of content, attention will become increasingly expensive, while truth will become the rarest and most valuable commodity of all.