Why Gmail Is A Spam Killer
Sushubh Mittal at Search Engine News Journal points out problems email marketters face with the advent of Gmail and context sensitive ads. The main problem is that when they spam you, a relevant ad, most likely from a competitor, appears next to the email, and the user is more likely to click on that than your spam. It points out two solutions: either eliminating Gmail from spam mail lists (which would push everybody to use Gmail) or delivering all ads as images, which would clog up all the smaller than Gmail inboxes and eliminate relevant ads. I propose a different solution for spammers, that Gmail users will hate. Spammers can send emails to only Gmail users that contain specific fake words. They can then buy those fake worde for next to nothing in AdWords. When a user looks at those fake emails, they see that companies ads, and are so frustrated by the spam that they are more likely to click on the ad, which in turn costs the advertiser next to nothing. If an advertiser tries this, feel free to skewer me.
- posted by Nathan Weinberg @ 8/30/2004 12:43:00 PM