For more than a decade, our economic systems have been built around one scarce resource: attention. The battle for eyeballs, clicks, time-on-site, likes, and follows has been the defining dynamic of the digital age.

But now, something is shifting. The model of “capture attention → monetize” is fraying. What’s emerging instead is an economy where experiences matter more than mere visibility, where transformation matters more than consumption, and where trust matters more than mass reach.

Why the Old Model Is Breaking

Several converging dynamics indicate the attention-first economy is losing its edge:

• Saturation and fragmentation: As McKinsey & Company notes, consumers now engage with media across dozens of screens, formats and platforms, yet their total time hasn’t grown significantly. The focus is less on ‘how much attention’ and more on ‘what quality of attention.’
• Attention as currency, with limits: In academic work we see attention becoming conceptualized as a tradable resource or “symbolic currency” rather than just a metric.
• Human resistance & fatigue: As Center for Human Technology notes, the constant competition for attention carries costs, including burnout, distracted minds, and lower focus, which ironically reduce the value of capturing attention in the first place. 
• Experience over stuff: Even before we move fully into the new economy, consumers (especially younger ones) are signaling they prefer time and meaning over mere material or passive content. For example: research on the experience economy highlights how experiences deliver longer‐lasting enjoyment than just purchases.

Taken together, these patterns suggest the “attention economy” isn’t dead... it’s evolving. The core question becomes: what comes next? 

The Emerging Economy of Experience, Transformation & Trust

Here’s how I see the next phase shaping up, including three pillars you can anchor your brand, work and message into.

1. Experience is the new product

In the original “experience economy” framing by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, commodities → goods → services → experiences. What’s new now is that mainstream behavior, digital augmentation, and identity-driven consumption are accelerating this.
People aren’t simply buying a thing; they’re buying how it makes them feel, how it transforms them, how they show up after it.
If you're a leadership or brand strategist, that means the offering isn’t just “training” or “consulting” or “content”... it’s an experience of becoming.
When your audience asks: “How am I different after this?”... you’re stepping into the experience economy.

2. Transformation over transaction

If we think about attention economy as: “get someone to pay attention → convert quickly → move on”, the new economy asks: “what lasting change happens?”
Transformation is deeper. It asks: identity, purpose, systems, culture. It connects to your work around human potential, energetic identity, designing teams as living systems.
The leverage is that when you help someone shift who they are, rather than what they do, you move from commodity to conviction.
Economically: transformation creates trust, stickiness, referrals, meaning-based relationships rather than one-time purchases.
From a brand standpoint: you’re no longer selling widgets or content; you’re selling metamorphosis.

3. Trust as the new currency

When attention is abundant (or over-monetized), what people value shifts. They move toward trust, in who delivers, in what’s real, in what’s aligned with their values.
In a world of hyper-noise, curated algorithms, AI generated influencers, the one thing people pay for is what feels authentic, resonant, safe.
Trust is fragile, but also high-leverage. When your brand becomes a trust-anchor, people believe you, feel you, and rely on you, meaning you’re playing a different game.
In this new economy, the metrics shift: less about size of audience, more about depth of alignment; less about views, more about outcomes; fewer random impressions, more intentional connections.

What This Means for Your Brand & Business

Here are how I see the practical implications for thought leaders and businesses.

• Content shift: Move from “Look at this big trend” to “Here’s how this will transform you or your team. And here’s what to do about it.”
• Offer architecture: Create products that emphasise experience (immersive, community-based, identity shifting), transformation (outcomes, measurable shifts in being/doing), and trust (small cohorts, high-touch, signature frameworks).
• Audience journey: Instead of poles of reach → cheap transaction, build pathways of resonant entry → deep experience → long-term transformation.
• Measurement & narratives: Start tracking and telling stories of transformation (e.g., “X client shifted from hierarchical to decentralized team; now they…”). Use case studies, qualitative data, identity re-code stories. These build trust and show real experience, not just impressions.
• Brand voice: Lean into language of “meaning”, “systems”, “identity evolution”, “human advantage”. Signal that you’re beyond the attention game, and you’re here for the long horizon.

Signals to Watch

• Internal metrics: When you see decreasing ROI on purely attention‐based metrics (views, likes) and increasing value from metrics like comments, DMs, cohort conversions → that signals the shift.
• Market moves: When brands win by experience/design/trust rather than sheer reach. For example: the “intimacy economy” or niche communities becoming more valuable than large mass audiences. 
• Systemic change: If policy, regulation or economics start treating attention as scarce resource or externality (see recent research proposing attention taxation). 
• Human behavior: Rising demand for identity work, transformation journeys, immersive experiences (online + offline), fewer purely passive media habits.

Don't get me wrong, the attention economy served us for a phase. It created vast scale, speed, and spectacle. But scale without depth is shallow, and speed without meaning is exhausting.

What lies ahead is not simply a new feature (or bug) of the same game, it’s a different game altogether. One where experience, transformation, and trust become the core currencies.
Whether you're a coach, consultant, business, etc., invite your audience into it. Build your brand around it, and lean into it.

Being seen is great, but it has nothing in comparison to the power of being felt, trusted, and transformed. And that's what the future is about... and requires.