Bangladesh is often discussed in terms of labour, manufacturing, and remittances. Yet an equally powerful economic resource remains largely invisible in policy discussions and investment theses: attention.
Every day, tens of millions of Bangladeshis spend hours on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, mobile games, and messaging platforms. Measured in time, engagement, and cultural influence, this attention is already being bought and sold. The issue is not whether Bangladesh has an attention market - it is that we have failed to recognise it as one.
In modern digital economies, attention functions like a raw commodity. Platforms monetise it through advertising. Creators convert it into income. Brands transform it into demand. Unlike physical exports, attention requires no ports, no shipping containers, and no inventory. It scales instantly and travels frictionlessly across borders.
Bangladesh holds three structural advantages in this market: a large, young population, high mobile internet penetration, and cultural fluency with short-form, social-first content. Yet, attention generated in Bangladesh is rarely captured at its full value locally. Instead, it is exported, often unintentionally, through global platforms that settle earnings in foreign currencies.
On a per-user basis, Bangladeshi attention is among the cheapest in the world. CPMs are low, brand budgets are constrained, and local advertising sophistication remains limited. From a global perspective, this makes Bangladesh a high-volume, low-cost attention pool. This mispricing creates arbitrage.
A Bangladeshi creator earning views locally may be paid in USD by YouTube. A D2C brand can acquire domestic attention cheaply and convert it into sales from diaspora customers abroad. A freelancer builds an audience on LinkedIn or X and translates credibility into foreign contracts. The attention originates locally. The value is realised globally.
Digital media platforms function as currency exchangers. They convert: Bangladeshi time into foreign ad revenue, local cultural relevance into global reach, and low-cost attention into high-value outcomes.
This explains why many digital-native businesses - from content studios to niche D2C brands - are more export-oriented than traditional SMEs, even when they appear domestic. Some of Bangladesh’s most successful “fashion” or “lifestyle” brands are, in practice, content companies first. Brands such as Gorur Ghash and Get The Juice have demonstrated how sustained storytelling builds both audience and demand.
In effect, Bangladesh is exporting attention much like it exports labour, except this export requires no visas, factories, or intermediaries. Waiting for only large manufacturers to go global is a strategic blind spot.
Thousands of Bangladeshis already operate within this system. There are creators monetising global platforms with foreign payouts, agencies running campaigns for overseas clients, brands using social media to reach diaspora markets, and founders building English-language audiences before local scale. Yet, none of this activity is formally classified as an export sector. There are no dashboards tracking attention flows, no incentives linked to monetised reach, and no policy language that treats attention as an economic input.
As a result, this economy grows quietly, despite being one of the most capital-efficient growth engines available to the country. Ghorerbazar’s emergence as a trusted food brand for Bangladeshi expatriates in the US, UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE illustrates this clearly: a Bangladeshi-global brand built through attention before logistics.
Traditional economic frameworks struggle to price attention. It does not appear cleanly in trade balances. It does not always move through banks in predictable ways. It is fragmented across platforms and individuals rather than concentrated in large firms. But ignoring it has consequences.
Countries that recognise attention early invest in creators, media infrastructure, and digital storytelling capacity. Countries that do not become raw attention suppliers - exporting value without capturing the upside. Bangladesh risks falling into the latter category unless the narrative shifts.
If attention were treated as an exportable resource, several changes would follow. Creators would be recognised as micro-exporters, and digital media businesses would qualify for export incentives. Furthermore, reach, engagement, and audience data would be tracked alongside revenue. Capital would also flow earlier into audience-first ventures. Most importantly, young Bangladeshis would learn that attention is not merely consumption. It is production.
Bangladesh does not lack opportunity. It lacks recognition of where value is already being created. The attention market is not speculative. It is operational, global, and expanding. Digital media is its cross-currency vehicle, converting local engagement into foreign value every day.
The question is no longer whether Bangladesh has an attention economy. The question is whether we will continue exporting it unconsciously - or choose to build, own, and scale it deliberately.
