According to Forbes.com researchers, display ads don’t work. In fact, only 0.1% of them are ever clicked on. So why do we keep using them? Why did ComScore’s Digital Future in Focus report for 2013 find that 5.3 trillion display ads were created in the U.S. alone that year?

All marketing is losing effectiveness

Well, for one, almost all types of marketing are seeing a slump in their effectiveness. Direct mail and email marketers often see their hard work headed to the trash (in the cyber world or literal world) before a pair of human eyes ever looks at it. And television commercials are either ignored (as Millward Brown Digital reported that 78% of consumers access second screens while watching TV) or bypassed when people stream their shows online.

Brian Walker, the Chief Strategy Officer at Hybris Software, said that a major mistake marketers are making in the face of these challenge is to “’do more of it’ rather than do it smarter.” They aren’t taking into account clues their own cus...

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