[johnvclifford]

ROI to the advertiser is a key metric. Smart marketers compare the LTV or Life time value of customers that come from specific campaigns. ROI metric does not have to be better than Google for an ad campaign on Facebook or Microsoft Adcenter to be profitable. I have worked with clients to use web analytics and cohort analysis to optimize both quality (higher conversion, better LTV ) and quantity of leads. Sometimes Microsoft Adcenter traffic converts better but does have sufficient quantity compared to Google Adwords. Also different ad platforms have different levels or competition as well as different levels of fraud detection and click quality. I am surprised that Facebook does not detect and suspend obviously spammy user accounts whether that account is bot driven or outsourced to humans overseas.Google and Facebook have financial incentives to not filter out all low quality ad traffic because many advertisers don't have expertise or time to closely examine traffic sources as the company mentioned in this news story.

A combination of tech expertise and marketing savvy are needed to reduce this problem. More analytic tools are available for Google Adwords than are available for Facebook ads.