With Internet marketers putting the squeeze on budgets the search for the magic bullet to attract new customers continues. MediaPost gives some insight on a Merkle report that says that e-mail still is attractive to marketers but the perception from those on the receiving end may be changing as well.

The report talks about how inboxes are getting more and more cluttered with marketing messages. After looking over the findings it appears as if the direction that e-mail recipients are heading is toward having had enough of the practice. I know how I react to e-mails that I have opted – in to receive. I take a brief look at the subject line and if it is not something that can make me slow down for a second it’s deleted. Not to say that my behavior is normal but I suspect that the patience level on these techniques is waning.

How much would you pay, if anything, to make your favorite sites ad-free? That’s the question AdAge asked consumers, and they found very interesting results. AdAge wanted to know how much a year you (the consumer) would pay to remove ads from your favorite sites per year. For a consumer’s favorite sites, you’d expect many of them to be willing to pay. Their study proved otherwise.

Only 2.4% of consumers said they would definitely pay $39.99/year for their favorites sites to go ad-free. That works out to less than $4 per month! Another 3.5% said they would be very likely. Here are the rest of the results: