Attention system
An attention system maps where an audience spends time, which formats travel there, and who holds the ground you want.
Every audience already has somewhere it goes. The system is the map of that behaviour, drawn before anything is built.
Three things get mapped. Where the audience spends time. Which formats travel in those places. Who is currently holding the ground you want to occupy.
Why map before building
Building first means guessing the destination. Formats get made for platforms the audience has left, or shaped for a room that rewards something else. Mapping first makes those choices evidence-led.
The third element is the one teams skip. Someone is already getting the response you want. What they do is readable, and reading it is cheaper than rediscovering it.
What the map is not
It is not a persona document. Personas describe who people are. This describes where they go and what stops them there. The second is observable, and it moves faster.
It is also not a channel list. A list names platforms. The map ranks them against one asset and one audience. Two organisations in the same category get different maps.
Where it is produced
The attention-system map is the second output of the Distribution Blueprint, directly after the asset inventory. Together they set what is available and where it could go. The gap between the two is what the rest of the diagnostic addresses.