Here is a quote from web usability expert Gerry McGovern that is, frankly, alarming for the digital marketer:

“The Web is not a great place to get attention. We have gone from passively ignoring advertising to actively seeking to eliminate ads by installing ad blockers. Our attention spans continue to contract. A 2015 Microsoft study found that the average attention span has reduced from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds today. (The attention span of a goldfish is estimated to be 9 seconds.)

Impatience is the defining word for web behavior. People multitask more, scan more, channel hop more, and respond with brutal dismissiveness to anything viewed as wasting their time.”

Whoa.  The web is not a great place to get attention?  Isn’t that what web marketing basically is, trying to get consumer’s attention on the web?

This is like saying drinking beer is not a great way to have fun.  Blasphemy.

But Gerry, who has analyzed human behavior on the web since it’s onset in the early 90’s, is not a voice we can just dismiss.  What does this mean to a business wanting to market online?

First, it’s helpful to make the distinction between attention and visibility.  As the data points out, human’s have a shorter attention span while online than a goldfish looking at a new plant in its bowl.  Getting people to pay attention to a prolonged message is extraordinarily difficult.

But you can work towards visibility at crucial moments.  Those times when our short attention spans are focused.

Consider kids on Christmas morning.  As they tear open their gifts, their attention is totally focused.  That moment of opening the gift is when attention is at its height.  It’s the moment we all remember.  The time after, as they dink around on the living room floor actually playing with the gift, is where attention waivers.

Think of people from your past.  The one moment you can probably still remember with most of them is when you first met them.  That starting point is an attention grabber.

How about a fight with your spouse?  You often don’t remember what started it, don’t remember the details of the argument, but you can remember when it ended.  It’s another moment when our attention zeros in.

On the dark side, people were always able to recall where they were when they heard Kennedy was shot, or at the moment they realized the 9/11 attacks were happening.

Trying to capture someone’s attention over a long span of time with online marketing content is, arguably, an act of futility.  You’re fighting against a circumstance that splinters a span into a fray of brief moments.

The mistake is trying to win attention over the span – “in between” beginning and end.

However, if you can create visibility for your business at that moment when someone’s tearing open a highly anticipated gift, you’ll catch a time when you can be remembered.  The trick is to identify those moments with your target audience – and to be there when they happen.

With online marketing, visibility at the right moment – rather than trying to maintain attention – is the real win.