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As bot-nets drive down the cost of sending spam and as spam filtering programs improve, some spammers moving from CPM to CPC pricing. The resulting emails have no links or tracking, just a jumble of text to fool the filters and an image to carry the marketing message. (See related article in New York Times, 12-6-06) Like all spam, these image emails are unwanted and annoying, but also poetically surreal.

The takeaway? At low enough CPMs, brand advertising becomes attractive direct marketers.

Here’s a spam poem I received last week. I added line breaks. It was illustrated by a single image of some text, “APWL“, which I naturally interpret as a well-researched insider tip on a wonderful 6 cent stock.

Running and Hiking in the Mountains

By APWL

Kim and I didn’t care for our food
and everything
took forever
Ethiopians want to bring them home, not just to celebrate their past
I was there a week ago
and it was worse tonight
remember the local installer
they will install once DIRECTV ships the boxes to them
various other things go wrong
that I don’t care to relive
i told them not to come here
Perfect for the long run
I have been spending all that time running and hiking in the mountains
instead of
driving up them

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