China · Meta · Instagram · Facebook · Fortune Technology
Temu spent up to $962 million on ads that helped finance an army of fake creators on Meta services, research argues
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“This won’t come off!” he shouts as he rubs futilely at the brown filth covering his arm.
Key facts
- Between January 2025 and April 2026, there were 31 official Temu pages on Meta and they ran over 9 million ads across the E.U. and the U.K., ORL’s data says
- And yet her posts—which all contain links to a random assortment of Temu products—were boosted by Temu and seen more than 1 billion times across both platforms in 16 months ending in April 2026
- In the four months between January and April 2026, 100 creators accounted for 74% of all Temu’s partnership ads in the region
- And, “despite targeting E.U. audiences, 28 of the top 100 accounts were based in Russia and 19 in China, while only six were based in the E.U. or the U.K.,” ORL said in a data pack it prepared
Summary
If you are one of Ya Lili’s 183,000 followers on her “” Instagram account, you may have seen this video she posted recently: A man stands on a sunny beach, dressed only in swim shorts, his back covered in dirt. Ya Lily is the top creator for Temu’s partnership ads on Meta platforms in the U.K. and Europe, according to research seen by Fortune. In fact, of the top 100 creators boosted by Temu’s partnership ads, 73 are likely fakes, the research suggests. It is not clear whether Temu is doing this deliberately or is being fooled by scammers into spending money on influencers who don’t exist. Neither Temu nor Ya Lilly responded to multiple requests for comment from Fortune.