Will Facebook Fake Likes Lead to a Backlash with Advertisers?

By David Tobia
September 10, 2012

Facebook recently increased its automated efforts to remove “likes” that were generated from fraudulent accounts, according to a post on the company’s security blog.
Since Facebook often bills advertisers on a per click basis, Facebook’s own admission of fake likes will possibly cause an uproar in the advertising world.
“Facebook’s advertising system is built on the idea that consumers will be willing to build closer relationships with advertisers, ‘liking’ the advertiser’s pages, reading the advertiser’s status updates, and circulating content about the advertiser to friends,” explains Wired.
“If an advertiser’s popularity is exaggerated by fake ‘likes,’ it makes the business less trustworthy and less likely to be engaged by real consumers,” contends the article.
Facebook’s blog post references “vendors” of fake likes and the illegal practices of purchasing or selling Facebook likes. Facebook says businesses will only lose about 1 percent of their likes, but this could represent a huge loss for some of the most popular businesses on Facebook.

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