Slashdot Mirror
How the Spam Industry is Sustained
mOoZik writes "The BBC has an interesting article about spam and why it's still around. According to a survey, nearly 1/3 of users have clicked on spam messages and 1/10 have bought products advertised therein. "If no-one responded to junk e-mail and didn't buy products sold in this way, then spam would be as extinct as the dinosaurs.""
That's an average right? Because I can't see how 10% of people have bought stuff from spam. I think that guy who likes buying spam stuff is driving the average up.
That should really be one third of people who choose to respond to telephone calls to answer surveys. I think that is a substantial skew in their results right there.
I've recently taken a job at a small software company and occcasionally I have to take a support call or two. We deal with school districts and our software is used primarily by special education administrators.
These are people with multiple master's degrees and I'm amazed every day by their lack of techno-savvy. If very bright highly educated people don't recognize pop-up windows as advertisements then how can we expect the "average" person to recognize the bigger issue surrounding spam?
I think the fact is that most people really don't care that much. They just accept spam the same way they accept junk snail-mail.
The vast majority of spam that I get is targeted at Americans, and hence completely irrelevent to me.
I wonder if the number of people that "have clicked on" and "have bought from" is much higher in the US than in other countries.
Not to split fucking hairs, but "bought" sort of implies that they actually got something. Defrauded, maybe, not goddamn bought. /Hates the BSA, but would like them to start smacking the "buy software now" spams.
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I have to wonder how the survey question was phrased.
If it gave an accurate and easily understandable description of SPAM (e.g. "email from someone you had not contacted in any way or did not know how they got your email address"), it would be fine.
But I have a feeling (having taken a few surveys in my day) that it was something more along the lines of "How many times in the past year did you buy a product after receiving an email about the product?"
The problem there is that it covers legitimate email offers, like from Amazon, ThinkGeek, or whatever. People might even have thought it counted when they were emailed a confirmation for their purchase.
I wish these articles would include a link to the survey.
"If no-one responded to junk e-mail and didn't buy products sold in this way, then spam would be as extinct as the dinosaurs."
This is a very simplistic view. It assumes that people measure their results carefully, and that it's the same people who keep selling. There's plenty of marketing channels out there that have a poor return on investment, but they keep alive for other reasons. Such reasons include: people don't measure the success properly, there's a new sucker born every minute, or other less financial reasons.
For instance, I had a friend who used to sell sponsorship to big golf tournaments. Companies would pay huge somes of money, and there was plenty of data around that there was a lousy ROI. They kept doing it because they wanted the perks - the premium positions & champagne, etc. He said in his few years, only saw one company actually utilise their investment well by tying it in with other promotions.
In the case of spam, it may possibly be true that it is profitable - it does appear to be the same people advertising all the time - but don't assume staying in business = good medium.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
They are secret to the people who haven't heard of them. Unfortunately, they don't teach much critical thinking in school. (I think it would be great to require a semester of media literacy in high school, where students learn all the classic propaganda techniques and how to spot them...)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Given a commonly cited response rate of about .00001%[0] (as opposed to 10% in the article) used by People with more credibility ,in my opinion, than some faceless marketing firm, you're wrong. I'm still looking for something to
cite at the moment, as I don't expect someone who's never dealt with them to take Steve's(Spamhaus), Rich's(Spamblocked), or Bill's(theclub...) word for it.
The entire game of advertising has become one of infintesimal returns, in no small part because advertisers,like spammers, seem to think that forcing someone to view thier spew, will them or nil them, will make them more positively disposed towards the product/service/company being advertised.
[0] +/- an order of magnitude. I'm bad at remembering the exact number of zeros.
It's pretty messed up, indeed. I remember the days when everyone was worried about this whole "online purchasing" thing. Everyone thought that it was just some sham to take peoples credit card numbers. Now people will buy products from companies that advertise in a sketchy manner and don't even spell things correctly? It's definately a bit frightening.
Some people have very low sales resistance. They don't really want the spam (and opt to block it if possible), but once presented with it they have little willpower.
It's scary and sad and unfortunately true.
DNA just wants to be free...