Media advertising as human capital: the attention economy and its challenges

Abstract

The article examines how, within the attention economy, media advertising has evolved from a classical promotional instrument into a component of human capital that shapes economic opportunities, social status, and trust in both brands and the individuals behind them. The ability to attract, retain, and monetize attention is becoming a resource comparable to education and professional skills, while media visibility generates symbolic and communicative capital for market actors. This necessitates identifying mechanisms to enhance the resilience and effectiveness of media advertising as an element of human capital while minimizing ethical devaluation so as to ensure authentic interaction, drawing on a combination of system and comparative analyses, statistical approaches, content analysis, case studies, and critical analysis. Based on a comparative analysis of the markets of the United States, the European Union, and Ukraine, the study records a growing role for video, audio, and podcast formats as carriers of “deep attention” and trust, despite differences in market scale and structure. The study identifies systemic shortcomings in all compared countries, including dependence on platform algorithms, unstable audience reach, commercialization of privacy, risks of loss of authenticity, and related ethical dilemmas. Together, these factors significantly undermine the long-term robustness of advertising strategies. As a standard of trust and verifiability in communications, the article proposes the concept of an “advertisement passport” with a QR link to official web pages providing full details, guarantees, and transparent terms. It recommends a shift from purely quantitative indicators to “trust and attention metrics” (time in contact, depth of engagement, share of traffic to official sites), and prioritizing product-centric content over influencers’ emotional self-presentation. The practical significance lies in outlining an updated model of media advertising as a human-capital asset, in which the combination of attention metrics, transparency, and authenticity reduces sensitivity to algorithmic volatility, improves the predictability of return on investment (ROI), and legitimizes advertising as an ethically acceptable form of public communication. The findings may be useful for entrepreneurs, individual entrepreneurs (sole proprietors), opinion leaders, and organizations seeking to combine economic efficiency with social responsibility amid information overload and attention scarcity.