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The economics of attention

You've probably seen the issue of New York magazine with the spread of Lindsay Lohan channeling Marilyn Monroe. But have you seen the economics?!

Here are a few things to think about, courtesy of Forbes.com: 

The Feb. 25 edition of the weekly magazine, with Lohan on the front cover, hit newsstands on Monday. That same morning, the magazine posted the photo portfolio on its NYmag.com Web site. For a site that's averaged around a million page views a day lately, the results were stunning. NYmag.com recorded a total of more than 40 million page views Monday and Tuesday, more than 34 million of which came from the Lohan portfolio.

According to New York's online rate card, the "super banner ad" of the type that appears on the Lohan photo slideshow has a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) of $15. Multiply that by the number of views and the Lohan slideshow ads were valued at more than $500,000 over two days. Based on its rate card, New York generated about as much revenue per day from its online slideshow as it would from four $64,500 full-page color ads in its print edition. And unlike print, the Lohan score can continue indefinitely online.

The photographer who snapped the photos of Lohan was Bert Stern, the same lensman who was behind the camera for Monroe's famed 1962 shoot at the Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles. And while some magazines reportedly spend millions to get their hands on exclusive photos of celebrities or their babies, New York paid Stern its standard fee for such assignments--and paid Lohan nothing for her participation, according to magazine spokeswoman Lauren Starke.

So now you know.  Keep your eyes wide open and you'll see people trading attention, recognition, and reputation all over the place; especially online.

Posted March 7, 2008
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