The Depressing News About Spam

There are some some interesting statistics in this Forbes article. The most stunning is the percentage of people who purchase stuff that's advertised via spam.

Americans waste an average of nearly three minutes each day deleting spam--a loss of productivity calculated at more than $21 billion annually. That said, you might think that fewer and fewer people would actually purchase products peddled by spammers. But you'd be wrong.

According to a recent study by custom market-researcher Rockbridge Associates, 4% of online adults purchased a product or service advertised via spam. Based on the number of American adults who are online, that's a marketplace five million strong, which is more than enough to encourage spammers to continue peddling their junk.

Clearly, email is not dead as a marketing tool. It's alive and well. Because of this, it is dying as a source for non-commercial information.