Temu Spent $962M on Meta Ads. Researchers Say Most of the Creators Were Fake.

The creator economy has an authenticity problem. Temu may have just made it a procurement problem.

Research published Monday by Online Risk Labs, a Czech non-profit, estimates that Temu spent up to $962 million on partnership advertising across Meta platforms in the UK and 27 EU countries between January 2025 and April 2026 — and that 73 of its 100 highest-volume creator accounts were assessed as likely inauthentic. Only eight had verified identities. Twenty-eight were listed as based in Russia and 19 in China, despite campaigns aimed squarely at European shoppers.

The mechanic at the centre of this is Meta's partnership ads, which let a brand pay to distribute content published through a creator's account. The ad runs under the creator's face and handle while the advertiser funds the reach. ORL found the format accounted for 65.8% of Temu's Meta spend in the period, against roughly 2% for a typical advertiser. That is not a tactic. That is an operating model.

Two caveats matter. The $962 million is a research estimate derived from ad reach and average costs, not a disclosed figure from Temu. And the geography of an account proves nothing about state involvement — ORL assessed identity using available public signals, not attribution.

The brand-safety question is still ugly. Marketers have spent three years building creator vetting, whitelisting and disclosure frameworks on the assumption that a face on screen is a person. If the cheapest way to buy attention on Facebook and Instagram is to rent a thousand thin identities, every CMO benchmarking cost-per-view against Temu is benchmarking against something they cannot legally or reputationally replicate.

Expect the pressure to land on the platform before it lands on the retailer. Temu's European volume has already made it a fixture of EU digital-services scrutiny, and "who is this creator" is a far easier regulatory question than "is this ad misleading."

For rivals including Shein and Amazon, the finding is a mixed gift: it explains the impossible efficiency, and it raises the odds that the loophole closes for everyone.