This has been covered elsewhere (for example on Media Post), but it's worth just highlighting. comScore's natural born clickers study shows that from July 2007 to March 2009, the proportion of Internet users that click on ads has halved from 32% to 16%.
It's a US study, though I don't see why things would be any different among UK, Australian et al Internet users.
Given that other stats show a miserable average click-through rate of 0.83%, this seems to point yet again to the hasty demise of the click as a form of measurement. Instead the ad industry is shifting the debate onto showing how, much like TV advertising for instance, it raises awareness.
On that point I'd say the jury is out. To refer back to two other recent studies. On one hand, Internet ads have been shown to be the least influential. On the other hand, if combined with a social media campaign there is evidence that they are successful.
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