Turn on, tune in, fade out?

Damian Thompson

This short article discusses an increasingly influential concept in marketing circles: continuous partial attention.

Turn on, tune in, fade out?

Damian Thompson

MEC MediaLab EMEA

One of this year’s many ‘must-consider’ ideas for marketers is ‘continuous partial attention’ (or CPA), which is defined by Wordspy.com as ‘a state in which most of one’s attention is on a primary task, but where one is also monitoring several background tasks just in case something more important or interesting comes up’.

The phrase was coined in 1997 by Linda Stone (founder of Microsoft Research’s Virtual Worlds Group), who claims that CPA is born of a desire to...

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