That greater intensity came in part from the disappearance of doubts as to advertising's power to drive sales, making audience attention more valuable. While scientific proof of the conversion of attention into sales may have been lacking, the examples of successful campaigns were too numerous to be ignored. Reeves's commercials for Anacin ("Fast, fast, fast relief") correlated with a 200 percent increase in sales over eighteen months. A new brand named Crest stormed the toothpaste battlements with a special ingredient, "fluoride," and a happy boy crying, "Look, Mom! No cavities!" It became the market leader in just four years' time. Television and print ads of the Marlboro Man, as we've seen, turned an obscure woman's cigarette into one of the market leaders in less than a year, and Revlon was widely thought to be saved by The $64,000 Question. Of course, it is possible that Crest was just making great toothpaste, or that Marlboro just happened to take off. Certainly, for every successful advertising campaign there were plenty of others that seemed to have no impact. Nonetheless, the number of notable successes was sufficient to set off a feeding frenzy.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 488