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.""

1 in 10?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Would you like to take a survey?

[MykeBNY]

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.

duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Graham Cluley [says] "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."

Well, duh. That could be said for any type of advertising.

Most users just aren't very smart

[rjsquire]

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.

Re:Just thought this was funny

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

and if no one ate at mcdonalds or pizza hut, they would also be just as extinct. or if humans stoped having sex we would also be extinct. something promotes all behavior. and if people are buying stuff from these email advertisers, then it only proves that people really do want these prducts and may not have heard of them if they did not get this "spam". so shut up and deal with it, it is here to stay no matter what you want, yes you back there watching pbs

Stats breakdown via country

[Hamstij]

I'd love to see the breakdown of those "1 in 3" and "1 in 10" type stats on a per country basis.

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.

bought?

[loraksus]

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.

Questionable Survey

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

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.

Not completely true

[m00nun1t]

"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.

So did I

[nc_yori]

I hear you on that. I've felt great since I decided to refinance my...kneecap *ahem*. Seriously, though, I'm often amazed at how ignorant the general public can be about Spam and junk emails. I understand that some spammers are very good at what they do, but doesn't it just make you lose faith in humanity knowing that someone, somewhere, has chosen to actually open a message titled something like "drew S0MMA, V1AAGRRA, V1C0DD1N, C1AAL1S, \/ALLIUM, XANAA, C0DE1NE, Z0LOFT AT L0W somewhere end!!!!". Wow.

Re:1 in 10?

[r00t]

It's not a 10% response rate.
It's 10% of users having ever responded.

So if you get 123456 spams and respond 3 times,
you are counted in the 10%. If you never respond,
you are in the other 90%.

Re:So did I

[northcat]

What would you do if you see an Alien? Whatever you'd do, in million years from now, an 'Alienologist' would call it stupid. It's the same thing to a new computer/internet users. They have no fucking idea how things work. Have some respect, it's not stupidity, it's lack of knowledge and experience. Just like you and me lack knowledge and experience in *some* field.

Re:Sigh...

[Jeremi]

There are some tried and true methods of persuation and propaganda, none of these methods are secret.

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...)

Re:1 out of 10?!

[geminidomino]

Given a commonly cited response rate of about .00001%[0] (as opposed to 10% in the article) used by People [spamhaus.org] with more [spamblocked.com] credibility [theclubbuiltonspam.com] ,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.

Re:So did I

[spectre_240sx]

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.

low sales resistance

[MenTaLguY]

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.

Re:1 in 10?

[mrcrowbar]

Don't try to understand idiots. They'll just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Re:1 in 10?

[StateOfTheUnion]

Also, as far as the original topic goes . . . there is no time domain given . . . which may imply that 10% of people have bought something from spam sometime during the last 15 years or so since spam has been around. Considering the time domain, I don't think that 10% is very high. That would be less than 1% per year.

I would hope that this 1% represents a portion of each year's internet newbies . . .

However, like most statistics quoted in the press, there isn't really enough information to draw a very definite conclusion . . .

Re:1 in what?

[rpozz]

Remember that academic skill != common sense, in fact they can often be inversely proportional to one another.

Those numbers can't be correct

[gooogle]

1) If 1/3 of the users click on spam, that means that even if the spam filters on all the major servers/clients let 66% of the spam through, the user would have to click on ~50% of those spam mails.

2) If 1 in 10 users made the purchases? Have they have outdone google's ad model?

I suspect these numbers are reported by folks in the spam industry to project better success metrics and lure in more clients.

I can see it

[Jekler]

1 in 10 isn't hard to believe, but it really depends on what we define as 'buying from spam' and what exactly this survey is defining as spam. In my own judgement, if I try a software product and later decide to buy it from a follow-up email, I wouldn't consider that buying from spam, but did this survey consider marketing like that to be spam? To understand the accuracy of the study we have to know the parameters they set. According to this survey: 1. What is considered spam? 2. What is considered "buying from spam"? (i.e. how direct must the link between the spam and the purchase be?) 3. How large was the survey group?

If no one was retarted...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the internet would be a much quieter place.

Per-Message vs. Per-Recipient Percentages

[billstewart]

Those two figures aren't in conflict with each other. You can have a very small response rate per message, but spammers send billions and billions of messages to millions of people, and it's quite possible that 10% of the people have bought at least one thing at least once, even if they ignored thousands of other spams the received.

Re:1 in 10?

[bionic_trout]

The majority of spam costs the spammer himself nothing other then a little time to exploit an unsecured Korean mail server and the inevitable fate of eternity in hell. Even if one recipient in a million purchased a product it would profit the spammer. If his margins are not high enough, he can simply increase the volume of spam until he generates enough inevitable purchases. The report is most likely that 1 out of 10 people have EVER bought something from a spam email. That could be one purchase for that one person after hundreds of thousands of ignored spam emails received prior to the purchase and thereafter. Even so, I highly doubt that 1 in 10 people have ever responded to spam with a purchase. These samplings are usually no more than 400 individuals surveyed, asking if they ever bought a product advertised by a spam email. Most folks can't differentiate between legitimate commercial email and spam and the other half is too busy to respond to stupid surveys from the BBC.

Re:That's fucken it.

[TheRaven64]

My idea was a little more direct. Send out huge quantities of spam advertising Fr33 v1/\gr/\, and then send out free cyanide tablets to anyone who requested them. A quick and efficient solution to the problem.