Whoa. Take a look at some mind-blowing stats compiled by CMO.com, Digiday and others:

• 77% of web display ads are never seen
  –  54% of web ads are technically impossible to see
  –  23% of the ads are viewable but not seen
• Average time spent viewing an ad: just 1.7 seconds
• The average person is served over 1700 banner ads per month
• Average click-through rate for display ads is about 0.1%
  –  Another way of putting it: 99.9% of the folks who see your average online ad will ignore it.
  
  

Fact is, response rates for display ads have been steadily decreasing for the last 15 years. Average click-through rates in 1996, not long after the birth of online advertising, were around two percent. But by 1999, display CTRs had dropped to an average of 0.5 percent, and continued to decline over the next decade until 2010, where they hovered at 0.1 percent. That’s about where the CTR average has stayed ever since.

But, of course, lots of advertisers have seen results from online ads – and online advertising continues to grow.

In March, Nielsen reported that online advertising expenditures increased more than 25 percent year-over-year as of the second quarter of 2013.

Are all these advertisers wasting their money? No, not all of them.

Online advertising isn’t always a waste. But bad online advertising – badly planned, badly executed, badly managed online advertising – is.

Couldn’t the same be said about any advertising?

Read 'em and weep: Stats from Sticky research. Read all about it...