Re: why is there spam?

From: Loree Thomas (loreetg@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Oct 01 2002 - 09:32:45 MDT


--- Damien Broderick
<d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> I assume radio and TV `commercial
> messages' with brand recognition must be successful
> on some marginal level
> in inscribing one option rather than another on
> brains that have
> consciously averted their gaze. But that doesn't
> work with spam.

It's a numbers game. TV and radio ads cost lots of
money. A successful ad campaign pays that money back
in increased sales. This is so effective that almost
every major corporation uses some form of advetising.

Spam is not anywhere near as effective as a well
crafted media blitz, but is doesn't have to be. The
monetary investment required is almost zero (a single
individual's time) so ANY return at all... any... is a
profit.

So invest 100,000 to increase revenue by 20% or invest
< 100 to increase revenue by 1000%

The problem is that spam is so cheap that it only
needs to be read by a small number of people and
responded to by a fraction of a percentage point to be
cost effective.

An ad campaign that generated 5 responses out of a
million views would be considered a colossal failure,
but a spam campaign that had the same results would be
a huge success.

Loree

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