OP is simply doing it wrong. Advertising works, and the title's claim only shows how inexperienced op is. I work at a digital ad agency. Ads work if you do it correctly, but it's incredibly easy to waste money. People like op are why google and Facebook make buying ads overly complicated - if it were easy you wouldn't have to spend so much money.
If op is reading this, I'd be happy to hop on a phone call and help you out.
@Soared, aside from the self-marketing of your firm how about you put your money where your mouth is. Let's use the same landing page - I'll make a campaign, you make a campaign, we each spend $500 and we track conversions in a specific period of time.
The one who converts more for less will owe the other $1000 - we can make the accounts public so that (1) the world can see your "expertise" and (2) how "confused" I am. Game?
Every article about rampant ad fraud inevitably contains a comment thread where ad consultants appear to make claims that other people "just can't do it right". Let's see it done right, then.
The landing pages (most likely multiple, targeted and tailored differently for different incoming traffic) are a big part of doing things right - for many people in this thread, a big part of what they are doing wrong is where they send the traffic. Many successful ad campaigns would have negative ROI if they simply sent people to the product home page.
Once upon a time there was an affiliate link that paid me $5 per referred sale. I sent them Adwords traffic at 30c/click and a 10% conversion rate ($3/sale = $2 profit for me) until they eventually realised they could just do Adwords themselves.
It doesn't matter if you're only converting 1% of advertising traffic if that 1% is profitable.
This article seems to demonstrate that bots are clicking links though, any comments on that? I mean, if it's true, and those are costing you money, you better be able to design some pretty effective campaigns with that extra overhead.
Sure, can I can show you my data and make you believe otherwise, I really want to get to the bottom of this since others also believe it to be an issue.
If op is reading this, I'd be happy to hop on a phone call and help you out.