Facebook advertising killed by bots
 

Facebook's advertising business is starting to look even shakier after it was revealed that some of its advertisers are losing fortunes to click-bots.

A click-bot can be set up by a rival. Its goal is to click the adverts so that the firm is charged without anyone seeing its adverts. To be fair the problem happens on Google too, but the company monitors its clicks and tends to spot them.

Now a start-up company said it's leaving Facebook because 80 percent of its ad clicks are coming from bots and Facebook is being silly about it.

Musician site Limited Run said Facebook also won't let it change its Pages name unless it commits to buy $2,000 in advertising a month.

Limited Run said it will delete its Facebook page because only 20 percent of the ad clicks it gets come from Facebook users.

The company used six analytic services and its own analysis to find out discovered that bots make most of the ad clicks.

Limited Run said 80 percent of its ad clicks were coming from users with JavaScript turned off, which makes it difficult for analytics software to verify them. Normally only about two percent of clicks typically come with JavaScript turned off.

Co-founder Tom Mango told the Los Angeles Times that the bot clicks were the last straw.

Mango said the company will concentrate its social media efforts on its Twitter page instead and will switch to Google.

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