The Problem With Spam: IT WORKS
It must work. Why else would it persist, a fraction of Spam victims must be generating a sufficient income for the spammers to keep their dark art going. The thing is, the line between spamming and some high-pressure online sales/marketing approaches isn't very thick.
Think about pop-ups, we all say we hate them, and that they annoy us, but they must work. One study suggests that pop-up ads generate a click-through 13 times that of the standard 468 x 60 pixels banner.
What about promotions and sweepstakes? A lot of people consider this type of marketing crude and 'cheap' but it actually works. An online website-building software provider recently doubled the number of users trialing its software with a macbook give-away on Twitter (where it also increased followers by 10,000% in one week).
Asides technological solutions to the problem and potential alternative solutions to spam, we have to face the fact that as long as we're gullable enough to fall for spam and spammy advertising, they will no doubt persist.
