When we put 10,000 impressions out there where we have a consumer who is leaning forward, connecting with the content, in a receptive mood, looking for something. We put that content in front of them, and if we're at the industry average click rate of a quarter of 1 percent, it means we're in the business of throwing away 9,975 of those impressions in order to get 25 at the end of the line.

Make no mistake, burning through inventory with the ultimate goal of maximizing a click-through rate is our industry's version of strip mining. The problem with strip mining, of course, is that it's not very sustainable. It treats all this inventory -- all those billions of pages and consumer interactions -- as slag, waste material to be discarded. It also has an obviously detrimental impact on the landscape, both economically and visually.

It causes us to carpet-bomb consumers with a mind-numbing frequency of "click me" ads. It wastes the time and talent of the publishers' sales and service organizations and pulls agencies away from their real missions of strategy and creativity. We can do more, we can demand more, and we have to have more.

Look beyond strip mining build brand awareness develop desire, its time to get creative and rethink your strip mining operations.