[Disclaimer, I work for Triggit]. I think this is a valid point and that advertisers should definitely be working with a partner that can offer sophisticated attribution and optimization methods (e.g. A/B testing, frequency capping, etc.) since as you correctly point out, over a billion people are on Facebook. Here’s what’s worked best in our experience when thinking about FBX attribution: 
1) I agree that viewthrough attribution on Facebook does have the potential for abuse if you’re an advertiser running 100% last view through attribution, but I don’t think any advertiser uses that kind of attribution model.. and if they do, I wouldn’t advise it!
2) In a control test (which was used in the study you referenced), users who see FBX ads convert at a higher rate than those who do not. This was even true during a click-based test, which is nice since you don’t’ really have to worry about a “constant refresh” problem. Not only that, but doing last-click attribution analysis showed that ROAS is higher than other exchanges, the CPAs are at a fraction of the cost, and more users are likely to convert after they see and click through from an FBX ad.
3) Again, can’t stress enough – advertisers should work with a transparent, data driven DSP that can at least put in frequency caps on an hourly or daily level and carefully measure their results to ensure they are getting their money’s worth.

Don’t hesitate to email sales@triggit.com if you want to follow up with more questions!

the cookie issue likely exists but not sure to what extent it affects performance.  depends how the campaigns were set up by triggit but the optimizations described below seem very standard/basic. 

better performance in general not surprising considering facebook (single premium publisher) is being compared to ad exchanges/ssp’s with thousands of publishers – many longer tail.   also factoring in the fact that fbx inventory is cost efficient is a huge signal. 

not a big fan of A/B tests but huge, huge believer in attribution methods and understanding the value of top/mid funnel tactics.  something very often ignored or diluted into retargeting metrics/attribution today.  big problem.  keeping a lot of great social, branding and interest spend under value.

Hope you get an answer Darren, if you do, let us know!

Over the summer comScore said that the average person in the US spends only 13 minutes using social media a day. I have observed the 15/80 rule. 15% of the users are heavy users creating 80% of the content. The rest are passive or just have accounts. I would believe Facebook getting credit of it is left open and I then went to buy something elsewhere and it gets credit. The management is a bunch of slimeballs under pressure to get their stock price up.

In my view the only credit facebook should get is when I click on the ad it takes me somewhere and I buy something. 

Best solution is using Firefox and blocking all the facebook ads like I do. 8)

Is there an apples-to-apples report of click-conversions vs. view throughs across fb/google/etc?  If it is really heavily weighted on view-throughs then you have your answer, or at least discount it by a fair percentage based on the ratio of clicks to views on average from the other players. In general aren’t view through discounted anyway on the agency side?  With all the below the fold, drop the last cookie on page load tactics that most everyone still employs.

FBX is the new AIM game – I’ve heard media sales guys tell me this.  The old AIM game was when people ran little 120×120 ad units in the AOL Instant Messenger application which cycled ads, dropped cookies but was mostly in the background.  I ran campaigns on AIM and never ever saw a click but saw lots and lots of view-through credit – tons of it.  I also saw campaigns I ran lose a large % of their last impression credit the moment a client turned on an AIM campaign.  Luckily for all of us, AIM is largely gone.

But now Networks and DSP’s without access to FBX are losing the retargeting budgets of their best clients to those with access because those with access can drop tons of retargeting cookies all day long and win the last impression.  Christina from Triggit says she doesn’t know any advertiser still using last impression attribution – um, what?  I still see most using it. Sure lots are using advanced multi-touch attribution but most advertisers just use DFA which is last-touch.  

It’s not all baloney.  And it’s not just working in retargeting. Lots of advertisers and agencies are doing interesting studies and analysis showing FBX does have benefits.  But the sheer scale also drives this attribution game. People sample facebook all day and if you’re touching consumers consistently throughout the day at high frequency the odds are in your favor to be the last impression before a conversion event.

And it’s not just the scummy guys who are doing it – to some extent, if you’re using a basic ad server you can’t help it.   If you’re not using an advanced attribution system, the best solution might actually be to keep it out of your ad server altogether and evaluate it separately – then you can see what all your other channels are doing and also try to figure out if FBX is doing anything.

I tweeted about this back in November actually - https://twitter.com/markmannino/status/274138076748607490