Temu spent up to $962 million on ads that helped finance an army of fake creators on Meta platforms, research claims

Temu’s creator-heavy ad machine on Meta is drawing scrutiny for a reason that sounds almost satirical: one of its biggest “influencers” may not be real at all. Research seen by Fortune says Ya Lily, the top creator behind Temu partnership ads in the U.K. and Europe, is likely a fake account. And she is not alone. Of the top 100 creators boosted by Temu’s partnership ads, 73 are likely fakes, according to the study from Online Risk Labs, a Czech non-profit focused on cybersecurity and online systemic risk.

The scale is striking. ORL says Ya Lily’s posts were boosted in nearly 109,541 Temu ad campaigns over 16 months ending in April 2026, with the content seen more than 1 billion times across Facebook and Instagram. In the same period, Temu may have spent as much as $962 million on this kind of ad across the U.K. and 27 E.U. countries. ORL says that estimate comes from total impressions and average cost per reach. Fortune asked two social media advertising experts to review the figures, and both said they were plausible.

What makes the setup unusual is how much of Temu’s ad push depends on partnership ads, the format that lets creators turn posts into ads if they promote a brand and include a link. Meta booked $10 billion in partnership-ad revenue in Q1 2026, which was about 17% of its total revenue of $56.3 billion. Temu is a major customer inside that system. ORL says that between January 2025 and April 2026, Temu’s 31 official Meta pages ran more than 9 million ads in the U.K. and Europe, generating 134 billion views, and that partnership ads made up 65.8% of its ads and 49.6% of its reach.

But the creator pool behind those ads looks deeply questionable. In the four months from January to April 2026, 100 creators accounted for 74% of Temu’s partnership ads in the region. Seventy-three percent of those top 100 had changed their handle at least once during the study period, one of them 15 times, and only eight were verified with a real identity. ORL also says 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. Temu and Ya Lily did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment, and Meta declined to comment.

The legal risk is obvious enough that even the polite version sounds bad. London advertising lawyer Stuart Lester said fake accounts presented as real people are misleading, and likely to breach rules in the U.K. and probably the E.U. too. ORL has already filed a report with the E.U.’s DSA regulator asking for a risk assessment of Temu’s low-grade influencer setup.