AI technology constantly scans our online behavior.

Advertisers capitalize on our attention. Social media is designed to keep us engaged and enraged.

We are no longer consuming information but participating in a game designed to capture our attention.

Do you remember when it would take a minute or two for a website to fully load? The picture would reveal itself in incremental pixels until you could finally view it in its entirety. It was the era of banner ads and pop-ups, a rudimentary transference of billboard marketing to the World Wide Web.

Later, algorithms scanned, then shaped, our behavioral and consumption patterns. The length of time a user watched a video or stopped scrolling to “read more” became the metric for advertising effectiveness. Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technology measures how you behave online, like a little spy watching your every move without your noticing.

Welcome to the attention economy. “Pay attention!” the internet demands. “Or at least get paid for it,” advertising executives suggest. That is what influencer marketing is all about. The more clicks, the more views, the more money flows.

Joe Marchese and Jonathan Bing have penned a new book, Human Dot AI, that chronicles the rise of advertising from the era of Mad Men advertisers on Madison Avenue to today. Both authors........

© Psychology Today