Research
Boosted Partnership Ads Rose 35% in August
EU boosted partnership ads rose 35% in August and 54% of them had no matching public post anywhere.
August's EU picture from the Paid Partnership Report: boosted partnership ad volume climbed 35% on July while reach fell 16%, and more than half of the month's ads ran dark.
Ad volume rose 35%, the first monthly increase since March
Boosted partnership ad volume in the EU rose 35% from July to August. It's the first monthly rise since March, after four straight months of decline.
Brand adoption sits at 154 on the index, 54% above January. 31% more creators fronted at least one boost than in January, and average reach per ad is up 20% over the same stretch.
More than half of August's partnership ads ran with no public post
54% of August's boosted partnership ads were dark. A team monitoring creator profiles misses more than half the ads in the channel. By reach, 37% of August's boosted impressions had no matching post anywhere, up from 32% in July.
August's biggest dark partnership ads
No matching public post anywhere
| Advertiser | Creator | Reach | Modeled spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| FC Bayern (45.7M followers) | 11.6M | €47–70k | |
| Jamie Laing (own page) | Jamie Laing (1.8M followers) | 9.1M | €37–56k |
| AXE offiziell | A creator duo | 9.1M | €57–85k |
| Edoardo Jannone (own page) | Edoardo Jannone (288k followers) | 7.1M | €12–19k |
| Lipton Ice Tea | Gian (122k followers) | 6.7M | €11–17k |
EU-27, Meta. Same methodology as the report.
The dark end carried big names. Google's partnership ad with FC Bayern (45.7M followers) reached 11.6M on a modeled €47–70k, British TV personality Jamie Laing reached 9.1M from his own page, and AXE offiziell put a modeled €57–85k behind a creator duo. BetterMe kept its single-creator campaign going: 19,693 ads for 89.7M impressions, 100% of it dark.
Doritos and a 90k-follower food creator topped the public boosts
August's biggest public partnership ad was a Doritos boost fronted by French food creator Claire Grand-Clement, who has 90k followers. It reached 11.2M people on a modeled €27–41k. Doritos also had a top-five public boost in July.
Booking.com's partnership with Oopsitsgary (6.7M followers) reached 10.4M on a modeled €50–75k, the highest spend in the public top five. Shopify followed at 9.7M with Swedish creator Lena Lind (320k followers), Head and Shoulders at 9.3M with creator Yessin (291k followers), and Garnier at 9.1M on a modeled €22–33k with a 304k-follower creator.
Country spotlight: Sweden
Sweden took 1% of EU boosted-partnership reach in August, and 87% of its partnership ads were dark.
Volkswagen Transportbilar Sverige was the market's second-biggest booster: 3.2M impressions from 11 ads and a single creator, with 0% of the reach dark. YSL Beauty's biggest dark placement put Swedish singer Molly Sandén in front of 704k on a modeled €3–5k.
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.
