What is the point of a bitcoin faucet? What is the motivation for the faucet owner?

Just to get a browser visit/IP address/plant some cookies?
George gave you the idealistic answer.  The cynical answer: the point is to get you to look at ads and produce revenue for the faucet operator, while paying you an amount of Bitcoin that you hopefully won't realize is equivalent to an hourly wage several orders of magnitude below sweatshop.