TEMU SPENT NEARLY $1 BILLION ON INFLUENCER ADS THAT INCLUDED FAKE ACCOUNTS..
Temu built one of the most aggressive advertising machines on Meta. Then researchers found that some of the accounts carrying that advertising appeared to be something very different from the influencers they looked like.
THE $1 BILLION WAS AN AD-SYSTEM ESTIMATE
Between January 2025 and April 2026, Temu's advertising activity across the UK and 27 EU countries reached enormous scale.
Research from Online Risk Labs, a Czech social-media research group, identified more than 9 million ads connected to 31 official Temu pages during the period.
Almost 6 million were Partnership Ads — advertisements distributed through Meta's system in collaboration with creator accounts.
Online Risk Labs estimated that Temu's activity represented as much as $962 million in advertising spend during the period.
That is where the "nearly $1 billion" figure comes from.
It is an estimate based on advertising impressions and average costs, rather than a disclosed Temu accounting figure.
That distinction matters.
The research does not establish that Temu transferred $962 million directly to fake influencers.
It shows the estimated scale of the advertising ecosystem in which those accounts participated.
THEN THE CREATOR ACCOUNTS BECAME THE STORY
Online Risk Labs examined the 100 Instagram accounts that were most heavily involved in Temu Partnership Ads between January and April 2026.
Those 100 accounts participated in approximately 1.48 million Partnership Ads and generated about 16.9 billion cumulative impressions/reach in the EU and UK during that period.
But the researchers found unusual patterns.
Among the 100 accounts:
73% had changed their usernames at least once.
45% had changed them at least twice.
One account had changed its username 15 times.
Only 8 of the 100 were verified.
And 47% were listed as being based in China or Russia.
None of those characteristics alone proves an account is fake.
Together, however, Online Risk Labs argued that many of the accounts showed signs of being created or repurposed primarily to carry advertising.
SOME ACCOUNTS LOOKED MORE LIKE AD INVENTORY
This is the most interesting part of the investigation.
A traditional influencer generally has an identity first and advertising second.
They build an audience.
They publish opinions, entertainment, tutorials or lifestyle content.
Then brands pay them to access that audience.
The researchers found accounts where the relationship appeared reversed:
Advertising demand → account → branded content
Instead of:
Creator → audience → brands
Online Risk Labs described some of these accounts as functioning primarily as advertising inventory rather than conventional creator accounts.
That distinction can be extremely valuable to an advertiser.
If an account is essentially a piece of advertising infrastructure, it can be operated at enormous scale.
TEMU WAS NOT USING ONLY FAKE ACCOUNTS
This is important.
The research does not say that Temu's entire influencer network was fake.
Online Risk Labs explicitly acknowledged that Temu works with many genuine creators.
The issue was the concentration of suspicious activity among the accounts responsible for a disproportionate amount of Partnership Ads.
Fortune also reported that Temu's wider creator network contained 12,000 or more accounts, many of which appeared legitimate.
So the story is not:
Temu's influencers were fake.
It is:
A very large portion of Temu's most heavily used creator-ad inventory showed characteristics researchers considered suspicious.
WHY PARTNERSHIP ADS MATTER
Meta's Partnership Ads system allows a creator to collaborate with a brand.
The creator's content can then be used as advertising inventory by the brand.
That is commercially powerful.
A company does not necessarily have to create every advertisement itself.
Instead:
Creator account
↓
Creator post
↓
Brand partnership
↓
Paid distribution
↓
Targeted audience
It combines the appearance of influencer content with the scale of conventional digital advertising.
Meta itself has promoted Partnership Ads as an important advertising format.
In its first-quarter 2026 results, Meta said the revenue run rate of its Partnership Ads product had more than doubled year over year to $10 billion.
That helps explain why a company like Temu would use the system so aggressively.
TEMU INDUSTRIALIZED THE INFLUENCER MODEL
Traditional influencer marketing is relatively difficult to scale.
You need:
find creator
→
negotiate deal
→
approve content
→
publish
→
measure results
Temu's approach was much closer to industrial advertising.
Thousands of accounts.
Millions of ads.
Automated targeting.
Continuous creative variations.
Huge volumes of impressions.
Online Risk Labs found that nearly two-thirds of Temu's ads associated with its 31 official pages during the research period were Partnership Ads.
Influencer marketing was no longer just a branding tactic.
It became an advertising distribution system.
ONE ACCOUNT SHOWS HOW LARGE THE SYSTEM BECAME
One of the most heavily used accounts identified by the researchers was Ya Lili, associated with the Instagram handle @findgadgetswithme.
The account had around 183,000 Instagram followers and another 129,000 followers on Facebook, where it used a different name.
According to Online Risk Labs' analysis, its content appeared in an extraordinary number of Temu advertising campaigns.
Fortune reported that the account participated in roughly 278,000 Temu ad campaigns during the study period — around 225 campaigns per day.
The researchers concluded that the account was almost certainly not what it appeared to be.
Then something else happened.
THE ADS DISAPPEARED
Fortune first reported the network on August 31, 2026.
At that point, Fortune reported that Temu was running approximately 4,900 Partnership campaigns per day through the network.
By September 4, 90 of the 100 accounts examined by Fortune had stopped displaying Temu advertising.
Among the top 100 accounts, 54 stopped using Partnership Ads almost immediately after the August 31 report.
Overall Partnership Ad activity fell sharply.
Fortune reported that Temu's Partnership Ads almost halved after the investigation became public.
THE TIMING CREATED A BUSINESS QUESTION
The disappearance does not by itself establish why the campaigns stopped.
Temu and Meta did not respond to Fortune's requests for comment, according to the September 25 report.
But the timing was striking.
The sequence was:
Investigation published
↓
Suspicious accounts receive attention
↓
Many accounts stop carrying Temu ads
↓
Partnership advertising volume falls
That suggests the exposure changed the advertising ecosystem, even though the precise internal decision-making remains unclear.
WHY WOULD TEMU SPEND SO MUCH ON THIS?
Because Temu's entire business depends heavily on acquiring customers.
The company competes in an environment where products can be inexpensive, but customer acquisition still costs money.
Digital advertising solves that problem.
The basic equation is:
Advertising spend → clicks → app installs → first purchase → repeat purchase
If a customer acquired for $5 eventually generates $20 or $30 of gross merchandise value, spending aggressively on acquisition can make economic sense.
The question is not simply:
How much did Temu spend?
It is:
How efficiently did each advertising dollar acquire a customer?
FAKE FOLLOWERS ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE MAIN PROBLEM
This distinction is crucial.
An influencer having fake followers is one problem.
But the more serious issue described by the research is different.
Some accounts may have been created or repurposed specifically to provide advertising inventory.
That means the brand may not necessarily have been buying access to a genuine community.
It could have been buying the appearance of one.
The economic difference is enormous.
Real creator:
Audience → influence → advertisement
Advertising account:
Advertisement → artificial creator identity → audience targeting
The second model can potentially be manufactured at scale.
IT ALSO CHANGES WHAT "INFLUENCER MARKETING" MEANS
The traditional influencer business is built around trust.
A person says:
"I use this."
The audience believes the recommendation because the person has accumulated credibility.
But if an account is essentially a shell for paid advertising, the relationship becomes closer to conventional media.
The creator identity is merely the packaging.
That makes the question of authenticity much more important.
THERE IS A PLATFORM PROBLEM TOO
Meta's Partnership Ads infrastructure is designed to connect advertisers and creators.
The system can therefore create a huge amount of advertising inventory without Meta necessarily having to manually inspect every creator's identity.
Online Risk Labs noted that Meta's Partnership Ads format does not require creators to undergo a verification process before participating.
That creates an interesting tension.
More creator access → more advertising inventory → more revenue opportunities
But also:
More creator access → more opportunities for accounts that do not represent genuine creators.
The platform needs scale without allowing scale to destroy trust.
THE ECONOMICS ARE DIFFERENT FROM A NORMAL INFLUENCER DEAL
Imagine a normal influencer with 200,000 followers.
A brand might pay for:
one sponsored video
or:
three posts
or:
a month-long campaign
The creator earns money because they own the audience.
Now imagine an account that can generate hundreds of thousands of advertising placements.
The account itself becomes infrastructure.
The more campaigns it can host, the more valuable it becomes to the advertising system.
That is why the numbers can become so large.
TEMU'S AD MACHINE WAS ALREADY ENORMOUS
Online Risk Labs found that Temu's 31 official pages generated more than 9 million advertisements targeting the EU and UK between January 2025 and April 2026.
Those ads generated a cumulative reach of approximately 134 billion.
Partnership Ads represented about 65.8% of the total number of ads and roughly half of cumulative reach.
This is not a conventional influencer campaign.
It is closer to a media network.
Temu effectively turned thousands of social accounts into distribution points.
THE CREATOR BECOMES A MEDIA CHANNEL
That is the larger business lesson.
Social media originally gave individuals the ability to become media companies.
Now advertisers can also treat individual accounts as media infrastructure.
The account does not necessarily need a deep relationship with its audience.
It needs:
reach
distribution
ad eligibility
targeting
scale
The influencer becomes less like a celebrity and more like a television channel.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE PACKAGING STILL LOOKS PERSONAL
That is why authenticity matters.
A banner advertisement looks like an advertisement.
A creator video looks like a recommendation.
If the second is actually functioning as the first, consumers may interpret the message differently.
Online Risk Labs said this could create a false sense of authenticity and potentially mislead consumers.
That is the central concern raised by the research.
TEMU'S RESPONSE APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN SELECTIVE
Fortune's follow-up reporting suggests that Temu's advertising did not simply disappear.
Its overall advertising continued.
The reduction was particularly visible in the Partnership Ads associated with the suspicious network.
Fortune reported that weekly ads across Temu's pages fell from 166,523 during the week of August 17 to 147,013 during the week of September 7.
Partnership Ads fell from 115,114 to 64,008 over the same comparison.
That suggests a distinction between:
Temu stopping advertising
and:
Temu changing where its advertising inventory comes from.
THE COST OF SCALE IS TRUST
Temu's advertising strategy demonstrates a fundamental digital-business trade-off.
More automation creates:
more ads
more reach
more testing
lower operational friction
But enormous scale can also create:
less control
less authenticity
more fraud exposure
greater regulatory risk
greater reputational risk
The more advertising becomes automated, the harder it becomes to know exactly who is behind every impression.
THE REAL ASSET WAS NEVER THE INFLUENCER
Temu's objective was not really to create celebrities.
It was to acquire customers.
The creator was a distribution mechanism.
The advertisement was the distribution unit.
The social platform was the infrastructure.
And the customer was the economic outcome.
That is why the story is bigger than fake Instagram accounts.
It shows how influencer marketing has moved toward programmatic-scale advertising.
MAACAT PERSPECTIVE
Temu's nearly $1 billion estimated advertising ecosystem shows how far influencer marketing can move away from the original idea of an influencer.
The traditional model was:
person → audience → trust → brand deal
The system uncovered by Online Risk Labs looked different in some cases:
advertiser → account → content → distribution → customer acquisition
The difference is subtle on a phone screen.
An advertisement can still look like a person recommending something.
But economically, it can function more like a billboard.
And that is the real business lesson.
When advertising becomes industrialized, the creator account itself can become inventory.
The more valuable that inventory becomes, the more important it becomes for platforms, brands and regulators to know whether the person behind the account actually exists.
