Is it Fraudulent to Spend Money on Lead Gen Without an ROI?

 
Thinking back on my career, I realized early on that marketing spending of any sort, whether for people or programs, must be rooted in my ability (and our marketing department’s ability) to justify the expense.  Nothing else made sense to me then or now.
If you intend to spend the investor’s money (AKA company money) based on notions and intuition, without a plan to report the results, you are misleading management.  If the results are not giving management the required return on investment, you are a fraud.  Naturally, not every lead gen program will be a success. Yet taken as a whole, a company’s marketing should be measurable, with the goal of always making a defined predictable return. 
Of course, proving ROI was for many years difficult in spite of Claude C. Hopkins’ book Scientific Advertising, published in 1923.  Yes, you read correctly – 95 years ago he took