Temu cuts Meta partnership ads 44% after fake influencer accounts are exposed

Temu cut its partnership advertising on Meta platforms by 44% after a network of accounts promoting the retailer was flagged as likely inauthentic, according to data compiled by Online Risk Labs (ORL), a Prague-based social media research group. Of the 100 accounts running the most Temu promotions, ORL flagged 73 as highly likely to be fake.

The steepest cuts were in European jurisdictions with some of the world’s strictest consumer-protection laws. Partnership ads ceased almost entirely in Ireland, Cyprus, Austria, Denmark, Latvia and Slovenia.

Temu spent nearly $1 billion on partnership ads over the 16-month period ending in April 2026, targeting consumers in the United Kingdom and all 27 European Union member states, ORL said. The retailer’s network involved more than 12,000 accounts. Its top 100 accounts took part in more than 1.4 million partnership campaigns, generating 17 billion cumulative impressions.

One account, “Ya Lilly,” used the Instagram handle “@findgadgetswithme” and had 183,000 followers; on Facebook, it was called “Must good” and had 129,000 followers. It appeared in approximately 278,000 separate Temu ad campaigns during the study period, an average of roughly 225 a day.

After the network was publicly exposed on August 31, when Temu was running 4,900 partnership campaigns a day across the flagged accounts, Ya Lilly’s ad activity fell sharply. By September 4, only five active campaigns remained on Meta’s platforms, likely remnants of previously scheduled ad buys. All posting activity stopped by September 7.

Across the top 100 accounts, 54 stopped using partnership ads almost immediately after August 31. By September 4, 90 had no Temu advertising. Overall weekly Temu ads on Meta platforms fell more moderately, from 166,523 in the week of August 17 to 147,013 in the week of September 7. Partnership ads dropped from 115,114 to 64,008 over the same period. Ad budgets for legitimate creators remained stable, indicating the cuts were aimed at the flagged pages rather than a general reduction in marketing spend.

The accounts often had nonsensical usernames, concealed their geographic location settings and were registered in countries including China, Russia, Bangladesh and Iran. Some also stopped posting. “When you look at their Instagram accounts, you can see that they have not published any new posts/reels since two weeks or so. These are predominantly the accounts based in Russia, with some also based in the United States or China,” said Vendula Prokůpková, manager at Online Risk Labs. “We also noticed that most of the Instagram accounts of these ‘creators’ no longer display information about the country the account is based in.”

Meta has promoted its partnership ads feature on Facebook and Instagram, disclosing that the program is on course for a $10 billion annual run rate. It lets brands pay to boost content made by third-party creators, with the company tagged in each post. The format allows advertisers to draw on influencers’ perceived authenticity while bypassing traditional ad-verification hurdles.

Industry analysts have pointed to Europe’s regulatory landscape as a key driver of the pullback. Under the European Union’s Digital Services Act and strict national statutes, platforms and advertisers face severe liability for deceptive or misleading marketing. In Ireland, where Meta’s European headquarters is located, as well as in Austria and Denmark, misleading advertising convictions can lead to criminal prosecution, prison terms for corporate executives or civil penalties calculated as a percentage of a company’s global annual turnover. In other EU jurisdictions, consumers have a direct right to sue companies over misleading promotions, exposing them to high-stakes class-action litigation.

Temu, owned by Chinese multinational PDD Holdings, has expanded aggressively in Western markets since its launch in late 2022, using a high-volume, low-margin business model backed by unprecedented digital ad spending. Neither Meta nor Temu responded to requests for comment on the ORL findings or the subsequent shutdown of the campaigns.