When working IT or development for a company, it’s common knowledge that all bad ideas, outlandish promises, and general bull slush come from the marketing department. Combine that with the Heathen Church of Telemarketing, and the entire lot can be cast into the same fiery statement. Marketing is evil. And now it’s been documented.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group that has conducted research on pop-up ad programs and the technology supporting them, said Wednesday that 55 percent of the ads, particularly those coming from smaller companies, used no intermediaries at all. No one else to blame but themselves. In the past, a majority of marketing companies have hidden behind the claim… “We didn’t know they were using pop-ups? We thought they were just giving away information about our products while handing out warm fluffy blankets to orphans!”

Not anymore. Researchers studied the patterns by loading two computers with adware and installing a packet logger to track the Web addresses accessed. Guess where they pointed. No surprise I guess, since most infected laptops come from the sales and marketing staff anyway. They wade through pop-up-sewage daily. So the next time your own computer becomes infested with adware or pop-ups… slap someone from sales. They probably had something to do with it one way or another.