Facebook spars with advertiser over click fraud allegation

Limited Run, a company based in Manorville, New York, wrote on Monday that it was deleting its Facebook page within a couple of weeks after it determined 80 percent of the clicks may be fraudulent.

The accusation is problematic for Facebook, which is already coping with high expectations from Wall Street following its IPO over the potential revenue the site could generate from online advertising.

Limited Run, which provides a platform for selling digital music and physical items, wrote that it noticed only about 20 percent of the clicks it was paying for lead people to its website. The company said it tried several analytics services and still could not verify more than 15 to 20 percent of the clicks.

It then built its own customized analytics software and said it came up with the same result. For the 80 percent of questionable clicks, Limited Run found that JavaScript was not turned on in those web browsers attributed to the click.

Limited Run said that is suspicious since in its experience, only about 1 to 2 percent of its site visitors usually have JavaScript turned off.