This is fascinating in a sickening sort of way. Adrants reports 1.1 Trillion Display Ads Delivered in Q1 2011.
That's 1,100,000,000,000 online ads in the US alone. In one quarter. January, February, and March of this year. It's more than twice as many as the same period in 2010.
Your personal share of these ads was 5,263. (That's 1.1 trillion divided by the 209 million Americans who use the Internet.) In a year, that's more than 21,000. Of course, at the rate it's accelerating, you're going to see a heck of a lot more than that by the end of the year.
Point is, we live in an extraordinarily noisy environment. Advertisers are clamoring for our attention everywhere, all the time.
That's what we're up against. It's the noise our donors live in every day. This is one reason fundraising is hard.