You're saying that if Facebook is fraudulently charging advertising customers for more than they are really supplying, that's OK and we should all just deal with it? Really?
FWIW, the last few small scale Facebook campaigns we've run at one of my companies followed a broadly similar pattern to the one described in the article, and we too have checked against our various analytics tools and server logs for comparison, finding the quality of Facebook's referrals far lower than any other source.
However, we do have some other plausible theories about why this might be the case. For example, if visitors to our (B2C, leisure-related) site first see the ad on mobile while they're at work, they're unlikely to explore significantly at the time, but might come back later. We do tend to see a significant spike in both direct visitors and visitors via search engines while we're running FB campaigns that would be compatible with that theory.
Even so, it's very awkward to audit what is really going on with Facebook ads. This is partly because it's hard to determine which clicks claimed by Facebook are actually coming through to our landing page and which are either phantom clicks or other events like Facebook "Likes" that aren't worth anything unless they ultimately translate into paying visitors. It's also hard to track how much money is ultimately charged, because the charges they actually make where they collect real money and the corresponding notifications they send out seem to be based on arbitrary billing periods that don't necessarily correspond to specific days/campaigns where you originally set your budget.
At this point, given the number of reports of strange patterns that do correspond to our own experience, we are sceptical both about how many clicks we get through FB are deliberate rather than "accidental" and about how FB accounts for clicks and calculates its charges. As a small business in a niche market, our FB campaigns only have a small budget and usually they at least break even almost immediately, so we tolerate the uncertainties because our bottom line is usually positive anyway. Even so, the lack of transparency and amount of potential funny business we see at FB is disconcerting, and it certainly makes us hesitant to commit serious money to any FB campaigns in the future.
Of course I'm not saying that it's extremely frustrating both to have click fraud and having little data from Facebook to better understand what's going on. I totally agree with that.
However:
1) I don't think Facebook would be so stupid to intentionally fraud on clicks ... the damage could be much bigger than the gain. I'm pretty sure this is mainly due to click farm, bots and so on.
2) I don't care about the click fraud. I don't advertise to get clicks. I advertise to get customers. As long as the overall CPA I get from Facebook is lower than AdWords I'll keep advertising on Facebook.
FWIW, the last few small scale Facebook campaigns we've run at one of my companies followed a broadly similar pattern to the one described in the article, and we too have checked against our various analytics tools and server logs for comparison, finding the quality of Facebook's referrals far lower than any other source.
However, we do have some other plausible theories about why this might be the case. For example, if visitors to our (B2C, leisure-related) site first see the ad on mobile while they're at work, they're unlikely to explore significantly at the time, but might come back later. We do tend to see a significant spike in both direct visitors and visitors via search engines while we're running FB campaigns that would be compatible with that theory.
Even so, it's very awkward to audit what is really going on with Facebook ads. This is partly because it's hard to determine which clicks claimed by Facebook are actually coming through to our landing page and which are either phantom clicks or other events like Facebook "Likes" that aren't worth anything unless they ultimately translate into paying visitors. It's also hard to track how much money is ultimately charged, because the charges they actually make where they collect real money and the corresponding notifications they send out seem to be based on arbitrary billing periods that don't necessarily correspond to specific days/campaigns where you originally set your budget.
At this point, given the number of reports of strange patterns that do correspond to our own experience, we are sceptical both about how many clicks we get through FB are deliberate rather than "accidental" and about how FB accounts for clicks and calculates its charges. As a small business in a niche market, our FB campaigns only have a small budget and usually they at least break even almost immediately, so we tolerate the uncertainties because our bottom line is usually positive anyway. Even so, the lack of transparency and amount of potential funny business we see at FB is disconcerting, and it certainly makes us hesitant to commit serious money to any FB campaigns in the future.