ABSTRACT
A key critical theory that has been used to explain advertising’s role in the processes by which communication is capitalized is the theory of the audience commodity, which claims that advertisers purchase audiences as commodities from media companies that thereby generate advertising revenue. In this chapter, I argue that while the theory of the audience commodity is an inaccurate representation of the process of capitalizing on communication through advertising revenue, the neglected concept of audience labor provides a critical means of understanding advertising. Versions of the audience commodity theory were rst developed as an aspect of the critical political economy of communication in the 1970s and 1980s, beginning with Smythe (1977, 4), who explains advertising as a process by which mass media companies commodify audience labor power, i.e., audience capacity to “pay attention,” in order to sell it to advertisers. Audience activities of consuming meaning by paying attention to, e.g., a commercial broadcast television program are treated by a broadcasting company and other media companies as a kind of audience labor. The advertising revenue of mass media companies is money advertisers pay to control audience labor, because it means they control what people pay attention to: Advertisers want people to pay attention to their advertisements.
