Temu spent $962M on Meta ads using fake creators, study says

Temu, the Chinese e-commerce marketplace, spent up to $962 million on Meta ↘ 0.98% partnership ads in the U.K. and Europe that relied heavily on fake creator accounts to reach consumers, according to research published Monday by Fortune.fortune

The findings, compiled by Online Risk Labs (ORL), a Czech nonprofit studying online systemic risk, reveal that 73 of Temu's top 100 creators on Facebook and Instagram are likely fake accounts, with 28 based in Russia and 19 in China despite targeting European audiences. Only eight of those top creators were verified with a real identity.thenews

A Scale Far Beyond the Norm

Partnership ads — posts that appear under a creator's name but are paid for by an advertiser — made up 65.8% of all Temu's Meta ads during the study period, compared with roughly 2% for typical advertisers. ORL estimates Temu's spending on the format across the U.K. and EU amounted to nearly 2% of Meta's entire European revenue in a given quarter.thenews

The research spotlighted one account, "@findgadgetswithme," run by a persona called "Ya Lili" with 183,000 Instagram followers. ORL found her content ran in more than 109,500 Temu ad campaigns over 16 months — roughly 225 per day — and was seen over a billion times. The account's content consists largely of AI-generated product videos hawking cheap Temu goods.fortune+1

Among the telltale signs of inauthenticity: 73% of the top creators had changed their account handle at least once during the study period, and one account changed its name 15 times.thenews

Regulatory Pressure Mounts

The revelations arrive at a fraught moment for both Temu and Meta in Europe. In May, the European Commission fined Temu €200 million for breaching the Digital Services Act, citing failures to prevent the sale of illegal products and flagging the role of "recommender systems and product promotion programmes involving affiliated influencers". Temu faced an August 28 deadline to submit a remediation plan to Brussels.euperspectives

Temu was already Meta's largest advertiser globally, spending nearly $2 billion on the platform in 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. Since then, U.S. tariffs have prompted the company to slash American ad spending in 2026, shifting its focus toward European markets where this latest research now raises fresh questions about the integrity of its campaigns — and Meta's oversight of them.wsj