Research
A Supermarket Ran May's Biggest Public Creator Boost
857k partnership ads, 7.8B in adjusted reach – and the largest public boost of the year so far came from a discount grocer. May's numbers from the Paid Partnership Report.
May's EU totals from the Paid Partnership Report: 857k boosted partnership ads, 7.8B in adjusted reach, and a modeled €51–77M behind them. The month's biggest story came from the supermarket aisle.
Lidl GB ran the largest public boost of the year
A single Lidl GB partnership video with a British comedy creator reached 11.1M people in May, on a modeled €45–67k – the biggest public creator boost we've measured in any month this year. A second Lidl GB partnership landed in the month's top 5 as well, at 8.3M.
Beauty and fashion built the boosted-partnership playbook. Discount grocery just used it for the two loudest public placements of the year.
The year's biggest public partnership ads so far
Largest single public partnership ads by adjusted reach, EU-27, January–May 2026
| Brand | Month | Adjusted reach | Modeled spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lidl GB | May | 11.1M | €45–67k |
| Charlotte Tilbury | Feb | 9.7M | €16–24k |
| TUI | Jan | 9.4M | €41–61k |
| Pantene | Mar | 9.1M | €38–57k |
| Shopify | May | 8.4M | €36–54k |
One ad per row; reach adjusted for delivery inside its month.
3,765 brands – the fourth straight monthly increase
Brand adoption kept climbing: 3,765 brands ran at least one boosted partnership in May, up from 2,350 in January. 16,200 creators fronted at least one boost, also a new high. Total ad volume kept falling from March's peak, so the channel is spreading across more brands even as raw volume consolidates.
4.7B impressions ran dark in May
60% of May's boosted-partnership reach was dark – 4.7B impressions with no post to find, no matter how closely you watch the profiles.
H&M made the same argument as Zalando did in April: 70M adjusted impressions in the top 10 with roughly 10% of it dark. The open-boosting cohort is getting company, but it's still the exception.
Country spotlight: Italy
Italy reached 1B boosted-partnership impressions in May from just 22k ads – Germany needed nearly 8x that ad volume for a similar total in February. Fewer, bigger boosts is the Italian pattern, spread across 532 brands.
RoC Skincare was the biggest non-Temu booster at 43M impressions, most of it public. At the dark end, a global gin brand's top Italian boost reached 7.3M people with no trace on the creator's profile – notable in a category where ad visibility carries regulatory weight.
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.
