The study shows that the click-through rate for spam promoting pornography is 5.6 percent, while spam promoting Viagra and other pharmaceuticals is .02 percent. Unsolicited spam emails promoting Rolex watches, ranks third, with a click-through rate of .0075 percent, according to the study.
“Successful spam is about impulse purchases,” Francis deSouza, a vice president at Symantec, told the New York Times. “Things like home mortgages have a lower success rate than things you’d buy on impulse. Things like Viagra, porn.”
According to some in the adult industry, spam is still a growing problem because most of those doing the spamming are overseas and live in countries with either lax or non-existent anti-spam legislation. Many companies contract spammers living in these countries to do the spamming for their businesses.
“Laws can’t stop spam and none ever will,” RageCash.com’s Operations Director Airek told XBIZ. “Most spammers don’t live in the U.S. I sometimes think the U.S. is alone in its fight to stop spam, so all they’re doing is effectively pushing it to other countries that won’t prosecute anyone. If the U.S. wanted to stop spam, they would shut down U.S.-based affiliate programs that take spam traffic.”
Others are not stunned by the study’s findings and echo the difficulty of stopping this global problem.
“I’m not surprised at the study’s findings at all,” Ric Garcia, operations director of MALLcom, an online retail site affiliate program, told XBIZ. “I mean, let’s face it, everyone is into porn in some way. Controlling spam would be extremely hard. What can be done? This issue is one that unfortunately hurts our industry, and we can’t really do much about it.”