For all the talk about our diminishing attention spans, the reality is that attention isn’t so much going anywhere, as it going everywhere and there’s only so much to go around. We may be spending more time online than ever before, but now we’re tweeting, watching videos on YouTube and searching for the answers to life’s unsolved mysteries, among other activities and often simultaneously. No wonder we can’t be bothered with ads, there’s so much else to pay attention to.

Seth Godin refers to this situation as a “surplus of attention,” a reversal of the previous trend that saw marketers buying up ad space wherever they could and at premium prices because there was only so much that people were looking at and it typically translated into increased profits for everyone.

Now we’re looking at a situation where there’s so much real estate that the options of where to try and capture an audience are almost too vast. Advertisers don’t know how to handle so many choices to leverage this situation and therefore are missing out on our collective time spent online. Godin sees the solution as “hyperlocal, hyperspecialized, hyperrelevant,” as the direction we need to be heading.

And while this trend, is more geared towards marketers, I see parallels within the business world, particularly when looking at new tech start-ups because this is the landscape that they will be navigating. Understanding the demands of the your potential customer in any environment, but especially online will have a huge impact on the success of your offering, whether product or service.

[image via katielips]