This is not a good analysis imo. You don't necessarily gain any new awareness by paying attention to something or someone, you gain information. Whether or not you were aware of that information beforehand, or if it is new information has little to do with paying attention except for the fact that you might become bored or uninterested if it's not new information.

And, like another poster pointed out, this information is not gained with money, the "paying" is a metaphor and the currency is your attention itself. You give your attention away for the value of receiving the information.

On top of that there isn't just 1 metaphor in English (and I suspect other languages as well) for even the word "attention". You can fix your attention to something, or direct your attention, we speak of attention spans, etc.