Illicit ads and other spyware programs take in as much as $1.6 billion a year – about $3 per year per infected personal computer – according to a study by anti-spyware company Webroot Software.
Vice president of threat research Richard Stiennon said February 2 that the illicit advertising market in cyberspace has about the same growth as the legitimate market – and that's about all they have in common.
"[Adware] has a similar business model and some of the same affiliates as the spam industry," Stiennon told reporters. "Adware is not just used to serve up ads for penis pills, though. Sometimes legitimate companies, whether they realize it or not, purchase ad views from adware firms."
Some analysts say Webroot's $1.6 billion cumulative estimate isn't quite accurate, though these same analysts say the $3 per infection reported by Webroot is probably on the money – based on public disclosures of companies who operate in that market.
That would include companies like Avenue Media, an adware company which claims 2 million personal computers running its programs producing about $7 million in revenue a year. That’s according to a lawsuit Avenue Media filed against rival DirectRevenue, accusing the company of making a VX2 package capable of disabling Avenue Media software while installing its own.
Another adware maker and deployer, Claria, is said to have revealed its programs loaded onto 40 million personal computers, worth $90 million in revenue per year through 2003.
Those claims, according to some analysts, equal about $2.25-3.50 per infected computer per year.
Webroot, however, maintains that an average personal computer online has at least two pieces of adware aboard, which – if one accepts an estimated 280 million personal computers hooked to and active on the Net – multiplies out to the $1.6 billion neighborhood.
