A BBC scrutiny suggests companies are wasting considerable sums of allowance on adverts to earn "likes" from Facebook members who have no actual fascination in their products.
It moreover appears many account holders who click on the links have lied about their personal details.
A safety consultant has mentioned a few of the profiles appeared to be "fakes" run by P.C. programs to expansion spam.
Facebook mentioned it had "not seen indication of a poignant problem".
"Likes" are rarely valued by many heading brands' selling departments.
Once a user has clicked on a couple the firm it belongs to can then post calm on their headlines feed, send them messages and inform their friends to the connection.
Facebook creates allowance by charging companies a price to uncover adverts written to capture new "likes".
Some companies have captivated millions of "likes".
But the BBC has been contacted by one selling consultant who has warned customers to be heedful of their value, and carried out an examination that corroborated up his concerns.
The immeasurable most of Facebook's revenues advance from promotion and its opening will be scrutinised when it releases its financial results on 26 July - the initial such report given its flotation.
Earlier this year Facebook suggested that about 5-6% of its 901 million users might be counterfeit - representing up to 54 million profiles.
Graham Cluley of the safety firm Sophos mentioned this was a major problem.
"Spammers and malware authors can mass-produce false Facebook profiles to help them expansion dangerous links and spam, and pretence people in to befriending them," he said.
"We know a few of these accounts are run by P.C. program with one person puppeteering thousands of profiles from a singular table handing out commands such as: 'like' as many pages as you can to emanate a considerable community.
"I'm certain Facebook is perplexing to close these down but it may be tough to heed counterfeit accounts from actual ones."
A orator is to amicable network said: "We do not see indication of a 'wave of likes' forthcoming from counterfeit users or 'obsessive clickers'."
But Mr Cluley mentioned it was in the firm's fascination to downplay the problem.
"They're creation allowance every time a business's advert leads to a phoney Facebook fan," he said.
Michael Tinmouth, a amicable media selling consultant, ran Facebook promotion campaigns for a number of tiny businesses, inclusive a oppulance products firm and an senior manager coach.
At first, his customers were gratified with the results. But they became anxious after seeking at who had clicked on the adverts.
While they had been targeting Facebook users around the world, all their "likes" appeared to be forthcoming from countries such as the Philippines and Egypt.
"They were 13 to 17 years old, the form names were rarely suspicious, and when you dug deeper a number of these profiles were fondness 3,000, 4,000, even 5,000 pages," he said.
Mr Tinmouth sharp out a number of profiles that had names and sum that appeared to be done up.
One, going by the name Agung Pratama Sevenfoldism, showed his date of bieing born as 1997 and mentioned he had been a manager at Chevron in 2010.
Mr Tinmouth mentioned this seemed "unlikely".
An examination by the BBC appears to have fixed this was not a one-off issue.
The BBC combined a Facebook page for VirtualBagel - a made-up firm with no products.
The number of "likes" it captivated from Egypt and the Philippines was out of suit to other countries targeted such as the US and UK.
One Cairo-based air blower called himself Ahmed Ronaldo and claimed to work at Real Madrid.
Mr Tinmouth asked Facebook to scrutinize the situation of controversial profiles after one of his customers refused to pay for his adverts on the basement they had not reached "real people".
The firm told him that the most were authentic, and refused to encounter him to confer a refund.
Facebook told the BBC that Mr Tinmouth appeared to have sent out scattergun promotion to a universal assembly without naming a aim group.
"We would never suggest that any person actions business in this way," a orator said.
The BBC moreover spoke to a amicable selling senior manager at one of the UK's greatest companies who mentioned he was increasingly distrustful about the worth of promotion on the amicable network.
"Any type of investment in Facebook promotion has brought us really little lapse on sales," he said.
The executive, who did not wish to be named, updated that his firm had found it could enlarge rendezvous with customers around the amicable network without shopping adverts.
"The fans you obtain from promotion may not be genuine, and if they are genuine are they people who will rivet with your brand?" he asked.
"The answer, more and more, appears to be no."
Facebook played down the situation of counterfeit profiles.
"We've not seen indication of a poignant problem," mentioned a spokesman.
"Neither has it been lifted by the many advertisers who are enjoying positive results from using Facebook.
"All of these companies have access to Facebook's analytics that enable them to see the identities of people who have favourite their pages, nonetheless this has not been flagged as an issue.
"A really tiny commission of users do open accounts using pseudonyms but this is against our manners and you use programmed systems together with user reports to help us discover them."
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