I’d always been pretty amazed that spammers even bother putting in the effort they do – convinced that it never works so what’s the point.

However if you subscribe to Chris Anderson’s long tail theory – the extension for spam is that a spam offer sent to millions will find a few souls who convert (for whatever reason).

I was gobsmacked to see that Marshal has just released a study that fond that a whopping 29% of Internet users have purchased items from Spam adverts.

29% – holy smokes! Over on RWW Marshall points out some thoughts arising from the report. Marshall contend that perhaps with a conversion rate of 30%, the market has in fact spoken and values spam. Of course Marshall’s analysis omits to take into consideration the fact that a number of people buying from spam fall into one of two categories;

  • They are purchasing illicit goods
  • They mistakenly make the purchasing decision

Both of which of course negate Marshall’s original contention.

So here’s my attempts to get a more meaningful metric from this discussion;

[poll id=”15″]

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

1 Comment
  • “Marshal provides customers with a complete portfolio of policy-driven email and Internet solutions that integrate content filtering, compliance, secure messaging and archiving.”

    So…um I guess their “research” is bound to support their underlying business strategy. *throws grain of salt over shoulder*

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