Great question, I think should have qualified my earlier comment that "people" was in reference to those of us involved in tech/startups. I haven't seen the recent studies but a lot of people click on paid ads, even more surprising is that a lot of people don't even know the difference or care about the difference.
I don't know if I would call it a failure for the advertiser since compared to other forms of advertising, you only pay when users engage with your ad. Impressions are free for the advertisers if users see but don't click. For Google, I do agree that it's a qualified failure in that some people want to block these results or ignore them but I think they've been taking steps to fix this by making ads less static and more dynamic like with their shopping results or with their hotel/airfare products.
I don't know if I would call it a failure for the advertiser since compared to other forms of advertising, you only pay when users engage with your ad. Impressions are free for the advertisers if users see but don't click. For Google, I do agree that it's a qualified failure in that some people want to block these results or ignore them but I think they've been taking steps to fix this by making ads less static and more dynamic like with their shopping results or with their hotel/airfare products.