From the Attention Economy to the Credibility Economy
For more than a decade, the dominant logic in communication and marketing has been simple: if you are present, you exist. The priority was to occupy mental space (the much-touted “share of mind”), appear everywhere, and multiply touchpoints. Brands created messages, media amplified them, algorithms distributed them.
And, without noticing, we entered a phase of hyper-communicative production.
Phase One: Saturation
The volume of inputs grew exponentially—notifications, short formats, instant-impact content, ephemeral messages—turning every timeline into a constant flow of stimuli competing for seconds of attention.
“From the recipient’s perspective—simultaneously the message decoder—the human mind doesn’t scale at the pace of machines. The result wasn’t greater impact, but greater resistance.”
Audiences became selective. Filtering ceased to be a choice and became a mechanism of cognitive survival.
Phase Two: Competing for the “Share” of Attention
Once space was saturated, the battle was no longer about being seen, but about being retained. Brands began competing for tiny percentages of mental time, as if attention had become a financial asset.
CTR, watchtime, dwell rate… metrics originally designed to measure engagement became metrics of fatigue.
Phase Three: Stabilization and Fatigue
The system became inefficient. Achieving the same effect required increasing pressure: more impressions, more content, more formats. Yet each additional effort generated diminishing returns. Like in an overheated speculative market, there came a point where volume-based growth no longer made economic sense.
And this brings us to the current phase: the phase of rigor.
The New Differential: Credibility
When saturation no longer works as a strategy, there is only one alternative: being genuinely relevant. And being genuinely relevant doesn’t mean just appearing; it means standing by what you say, demonstrating it, and sustaining it over time. That has another name: credibility.
Attention can be bought or planned; credibility can only be earned through coherence and consistency.
“Here’s another important side effect: saturation hasn’t just exhausted audiences, it has distorted perceptions of authority.”
The best arguments don’t always rise to the top; often, the most optimized ones do. Voices that perhaps should have stayed in small circles end up amplified through sheer visibility engineering. When this happens at scale, the system responds with skepticism.
Influence Without Substance: The Danger of Apparent Value
One of the most delicate effects of this transition is that misallocated attention not only exhausts, it also corrupts.
Some ‘content creators’ (as they call themselves) influence genuinely, mobilize communities, and generate real value for their audiences—but they do so by leaning on twisted truths or outright falsehoods. The problem isn’t their reach; it’s the social impact of placing seductive, simplistic narratives above complex but necessary analysis.
The attention economy made intellectual rigor optional. The credibility economy will require putting it back at the center.
Visualizing the Paradigm Shift
In today’s digital ecosystem, there is often an inverse relationship between volume and value: while attention is abundant but scattered, credibility is scarce and difficult to build.
“Capturing attention requires being present in the constant noise of social networks, both intensively and extensively. But transforming that attention into trust demands consistency, coherence, and time.”
And it is precisely trust that allows us to reach the highest level: credibility, that intangible asset that differentiates truly relevant brands and professionals from those who only generate noise.
Who is ready for this new stage?
Not those who shout the loudest, but those who never relied on shouting:
- Companies that have thrived on sustained trust rather than flashy campaigns: Patagonia, for instance, foregoing sales to remain consistent with its environmental message.
- Platforms that compete on reputation, not volume: InfoJobs explaining (with more or less success) the reality of employment without hype, rather than selling motivational smoke.
- Professionals who have built authority through consistency, even without massive exposure: many experts in cybersecurity, science, or regulation who contribute first and comment second.
Conclusion
The future will not belong to those who make the biggest impact, but to those who endure public scrutiny. Attention will remain necessary, but it will become a tactical step. The strategic asset will be having permission to speak—and having someone willing to listen.
Audiences must be engaged, but not under just any conditions.
