I can't speak for advertising in general, but I do performance marketing on Facebook for clients and if it's not profitable we don't get budget. It's profitable for us (we're in the middle doing the arbitrage) and presumably profitable for them, or at least the clients of ours who are doing the measuring with their call centers, ROI, etc.

How I wish all the brand dollars that are probably wasted stopped advertising and making our clicks so expensive, ha!