Navigating the Digital Attention Economy: thriving amidst the challenges of explosive content growth

In a world where digital content consumption has reached saturation point, capturing audience attention and creating value has become the biggest challenge for content providers. The digital landscape is evolving at pace, and the explosive growth of digital content has outpaced consumers' ability to engage with it effectively.

UK consumers are spending on average half their free time watching, interacting and engaging with digital content (26 hours per week, of an average of 50 hours of leisure time). But nearly two-thirds (64%) say the time they spend consuming digital content has now plateaued and will likely remain constant for the next five years. For content creators, that makes competition for capturing attention and creating value from consumers - in what we refer to as the Digital Attention Economy (DAE) - increasingly challenging.

PwC UK conducted a survey revealing insights into the current state of the DAE, including differences in digital media consumption between genders and age groups, identifying key personas with distinct digital media consumption habits.

The DAE landscape is constantly changing, marked, for example, by the growing popularity of user-generated content, new modes of content discovery and distribution, and the rapid adoption of new technologies such as Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Content providers must compete within and across media formats and rapidly adapt to these changes in the market.

To thrive in this highly competitive environment, businesses must adapt to fast changing trends and transform their operations to build the necessary capabilities for retaining customers and achieve sustainable long-term growth in the DAE. In the UK alone the Digital Attention Economy had an estimated consumer spend of £21bn in 2023.

Entertainment and media organisations are facing increased pressures to accelerate innovation and open up new revenue streams to recharge growth, especially as they re-position for fast-growing markets. Staying competitive and relevant in an industry undergoing fundamental change necessitates innovation, creativity and decisive action.

Our latest report highlights the significant trends influencing the DAE, present potential future scenarios for the market, and identify the key challenges that organisations in the DAE ecosystem need to overcome to achieve success in the coming years.