I've thought that the entire ad model behind the web, TV, and Radio is a mutually agreed upon set of fictions for a long time - now Danah Boyd has gone and looked into the question. It turns out that the advertising emperor mostly has no clothes. Danah quotes Dave Morgan, who's done some research:

What did we learn? A lot. We learned that most people do not click on ads, and those that do are by no means representative of Web users at large.

Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis. Of the 1% that do, most only click once a month. Less than two tenths of one percent click more often. That tiny percentage makes up the vast majority of banner ad clicks.

The "who" is even more fascinating - and it's mostly an audience that makes up a very, very small percentage of social networking sites. That leads me to wonder whether things like Facebook Beacon have more than a little desperation built into them. If you know that there's no air in the tires - but everyone else seems to think they are full to overflowing - it might lead to some pretty odd plans.

So here's the question I've had for a long time - at what point does the fiction of ubiquitous ads run into the reality of mass ignorage? When does the "it should all be free" mantra hit the cold reality that there's no there, there?

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