Look around at the mess that is the online marketing landscape.

 

Most will attest that there are far too many pieces of communication out in the world. It’s been a problem for a long time, and with AI came a swell of quick to press executions with little thought, and even less regard, to the viewer than before.

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No doubt that’s contributing to the problem and will continue to do so; but the saturation is also due to there being far too many new businesses vying for attention. Add their wave of messaging to the thousands of established, and not so established companies doing the same thing and it’s all become more than ridiculous.

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Most advertising is the equivalent to white noise at this point, and consumers see it that way. However, there’s one commonality among the companies that get noticed. One thing that helps them capture that elusive attention, and something only a few have figured out… They are in the business of entertainment. That's right, entertainment.

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Now, I’m not talking about companies like Warner Brothers or Disney. Oh no, every company, great and small, is in the business of entertainment. Or at least they should be. Modern companies are functionally in the entertainment industry, whether they admit it or not. The reasoning isn’t philosophical. It’s economic, behavioral, and technological.

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Attention is now the scarcest resource, not information. The average person sees between 6,000 and 10,000 messages per day. They notice less than 100, engage with less than 10, and remember a fraction of those. So, what does this say about modern marketing? Well, this means your competition is no longer your only competition. Your competition now includes everything else that’s fighting for your customers’ attention.

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And what consistently wins attention?

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Yep... Entertainment.

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Companies don’t operate in neutral environments anymore. They operate inside platforms engineered for entertainment. Platforms, which, by design, are in themselves entertainment ecosystems.

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Social media has become the primary discovery engine, especially for younger consumers. With 76% of users saying social content influenced a purchase, and nearly 1 in 3 people both discovering and buying inside the same app.

 

Critically, social media platforms monetize engagement, not information. Companies like Meta are attention refineries, turning user engagement into ad revenue at massive scale. So, if your content isn’t engaging (aka entertaining) it gets suppressed.

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The marketing funnel has collapsed into content consumption. Gone is the old tried and true model of awareness leads to consideration leads to decision making. The new model has evolved into watching leads to feeling leads to trusting leads to purchasing, and often in one sitting. The entire customer journey can now happen inside a single piece of content. That’s not advertising. That’s storytelling in the form of entertainment, with a dash of para-social trust to boot.

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Entertainment mechanics grossly outperform traditional marketing; and rightfully so. The entertainment industry has spent decades mastering anticipation (movie releases), virality (music drops), cultural moments (events, fandoms); and now brands are copying that playbook — the smart ones anyway.

 

Campaigns are treated like “launch events” instead of ads. Content is designed for shareability and cultural relevance. Even websites are following this shift with video content gaining 157% more traffic than static pages. So, a modern website isn’t just ‘this is what we do.’ It’s ‘this is an experience that holds your attention.’

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Moves like this are creating the new fans of brands. Because the most valuable customers today aren’t just buyers, they’re fans. Entire economies now form around “superfans” who engage daily, not occasionally. These people want identity, belonging, ongoing narrative. Winning is no longer built around making a transaction. It’s built around entertainment psychology.

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Most engaged brands no longer interrupt entertainment. Instead, they’ve become the entertainment. That’s why you see brands and businesses collaborating with shows, creators, and culture. Introducing content that looks like media, not marketing. This is the rise of narrative-driven landing pages and storytelling UX. It’s the era of emotional economics: entertainment that results in monetized trust.

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Bottom line… Modern companies aren’t competing on product or service. They’re competing on attention, and attention is won through entertainment.