Media fragmentation and information overload have combined to create a huge challenge for marketers today. How do you get people’s attention – and how can you hold it once you get it? An interesting take on this challenge is contained in the book, The Attention Economy, by Thomas Davenport and John Beck.

The book posits that we are in an “Attention Economy,” where it’s not lack of technical bandwidth that counts, but human bandwidth – the ability to focus on a message. Getting someone to pay attention, even briefly, to your message above all of the other ads, media mentions, news stories, and daily distractions is considered to be a great victory.

Increasingly, we have to put a moat between information and ourselves. For example, call screening, e-mail filtering – even commercial skipping on Tivo – are all geared toward limiting the information flow so that we can focus on what we consider “important.”

Thus the assertion that attention has become a kind of currency – it can be measured, bought, sold and traded. In fact, this is the premise behind Nielsen ratings and Arbitron measurements.

You might say that the old mantra of reach and frequency, where it was believed that pounding a message into people’s heads would affect their behavior, has been replaced with gaining attention and holding it. In other words - it’s not the media; it’s the message (Thank you, Marshall McLuhan).

Focusing on building a message that can cut through the daily clutter and attract attention and action are key to a successful PR campaign. Directing that message through appropriate media to reach out to the people who need to hear it is another. And evaluating how successful you are in gaining and holding your audience’s attention is the final – and maybe most important – step.