Every year or two, Ferris Research updates its estimates for the total cost of spam. Here are our 2009 estimates:
Worldwide, spam will cost us all $130 billion; in the U.S. alone, $42 billion. That’s a 30% increase over our 2007 estimates, which themselves were a 100% increase over our 2005 figures.
So the growth in the cost of spam is slowing down. Why do we think that? Here are the three main reasons (most important first):
- Spam levels aren’t growing (some sources say they’ve declined, but this is as a percentage of total email, but total email volumes have grown, so the two facts roughly cancel out).
- Spam filters are getting more accurate and more people are using better spam filters (so people need to delete less spam and search for fewer false positives).
- Spam filters are less expensive than they were (albeit increasingly purchased in a higher-value bundle of other functionality, including archiving/compliance).
The contribution of each cost component to the total is roughly:
- User productivity cost (deleting spam, looking for false positives, etc.): 85%
- Help desk cost (IT helping end users deal with spam): 10%
- Spam control software/hardware/service (licensing fees, amortized capital costs, etc.): 5%
3 Comments
So that’s about $11.67 per month for every man woman and child in the USA. Insane!
Hi Richi,
Could you clarify which growth rates pertain to which numbers? Is the 100% and 30% increase refer tot he US or the Worldwide figure?
Thanks,
Justin
The worldwide proportion of spam cost that is attributed to the U.S. is essentially unchanged between 2005-2009, so the answer to your question is “both” — i.e., these are worldwide and U.S. figures.
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[...] total estimated cost of Spam for 2009 is upwards from $42 billion (Ferris) up 30% since 2007. This cost averages out to just under $1000 per employee per year. Fortunately [...]