Research
One of April's Biggest Boosters Ran 94% in the Open
977k partnership ads, 8.4B in adjusted reach, 65% of it dark – and a top-10 advertiser that boosted creators almost entirely in public. April's numbers from the Paid Partnership Report.
April's EU totals from the Paid Partnership Report: 977k boosted partnership ads, 8.4B in adjusted reach, a modeled €60–90M behind them. After March's highs, volume cooled. The strategy split between brands got sharper.
Zalando boosted 94% in the open
Zalando entered April's top 10 with 67M adjusted impressions from 418 partnership ads and 61 creators – and only 6% of that reach was dark. Nearly every boost had a matching, labeled post sitting on the creator's profile.
Compare that with the market: 65% of all boosted-partnership reach in April was dark. There are now two visible playbooks. Some brands treat the boost as part of the creator's public presence; others treat it as pure, invisible media. Both are scaling.
Share of boosted reach that ran dark
Selected top-10 advertisers by partnership reach, EU-27, April 2026
| Advertiser | Partnership reach | Share dark |
|---|---|---|
| Zalando | 67M | 6% |
| Shopify | 79M | 77% |
| Temu | 2.7B | 79% |
EU average across all advertisers: 65% dark. Dark = no matching organic post on the creator's profile.
3,500 brands boosted – on 19% fewer ads than March
3,457 brands ran at least one boosted partnership in April, the third straight monthly increase. Total ad volume went the other way, down 19% from March's peak. More brands are in the channel, and each ad is carrying more targeting decisions behind it.
2 of every 3 impressions left no public trace
65% of April's reach was dark – 5.5B impressions that never touched a profile or a feed. Among the biggest dark boosts of the month: a 17.8M-follower global sports icon fronting a campaign that never appeared on their profile, at a modeled €48–72k.
Country spotlight: Spain
Spain took 1.3B boosted-partnership impressions in April, 67% of them dark, from 469 brands and 2,500 creators.
The counter-story sat right at the top of the brand table: a global beauty leader ran 34M impressions across 51 partnership ads with zero dark reach – every boost labeled, every one sitting visibly on the creator's profile. And Spain's two biggest public boosts of the month both came from the same mayonnaise brand, which is not a sentence we expected to write.
Where these numbers come from
Every Meta ad marked as a paid partnership, across all 27 EU countries. Reach is adjusted for how long each ad ran inside the month. Spend is a model built from reach breakdowns and CPM benchmarks, shown as a range. The per-country detail – top public and dark boosts, brand rankings, the creators behind them – is in the report, free per country.
See the full picture
Media intelligence across the entire creator economy – every partnership, boost, and mention.
