Gary Vaynerchuk breaks down how he values attention by tracking two things: platform algorithms and cultural signals like slang and trending people. A Super Bowl ad with Beyoncé could be a steal at $500k or a disaster at $40 million, depending on what you're actually paying for her presence.
There's two different currencies that I think about constantly. One is platforms. What are the top 25 platforms that have people's attention doing? What do they care about? From Snap to Pinterest to LinkedIn to YouTube, even within themselves, YouTube Shorts differently than YouTube. How do their algorithms work? What are their features doing? And I think about them on a day-to-day basis. And then I think about culture. What is the slang? What is the things of interest, the people of interest? And then it becomes a framework of like what's overpriced and underpriced execution. So for example, Super Bowl is the most underpriced media in the world. Verizon Beyoncé to be in that commercial. If they paid her $500,000, they stole her. If they paid $40 million, I think they overpaid for her. That is basically how my brain works and how I think about communication and marketing and brand building and perception changing and just the whole world.
