Research
Half of All Boosted Partnership Reach Ran Dark in October
50% of EU boosted-partnership reach ran with no public trace in October, up from 39% in September, as ad volume rose 38%.
October's EU picture from the Paid Partnership Report: volume rose 38% and reach 21% from September, half of all boosted reach ran dark, and brand adoption reached 205 on the index, 105% above January, with the number of creators fronting boosts up 17% from September.
Half of October's boosted reach ran dark
50% of October's boosted reach ran with no public trace, up from 39% in September.
October's boosted partnership reach: dark vs public
Share of adjusted reach, October 2026
EU-27, Meta. Same methodology as the report.
By ad count it's starker: 82% of the month's partnership ads had no public post, so a team monitoring creator profiles had nothing to find for more than four in five of them. BetterMe ran 31,619 partnership ads through a single creator, all 80M of its reach dark.
Doritos and Claire Grand-Clement ran October's biggest dark ad
The biggest dark ad was Doritos with French food creator Claire Grand-Clement (90k followers): 11M reached on a modeled €29–43k, with no matching post on her profile. The same pairing topped August's public boosts at 11.2M.
October's biggest dark partnership ads
No matching public post anywhere
| Advertiser | Creator | Reach | Modeled spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doritos | Claire Grand-Clement (90k followers) | 11M | €29–43k |
| jaylungo | Jonas Lang (52k followers), own page | 9.3M | €38–57k |
| Mel & Fernande | Mel & Fernande (742k followers), own page | 9.1M | €30–46k |
| Miss_gruenkern | Ronja Pfuhl, food photographer (363k followers), own page | 7.2M | €33–49k |
| Shopify | a creator account | 7.1M | €32–48k |
EU-27, Meta. Same methodology as the report.
Shopify ran the fifth-biggest dark ad, 7.1M on a modeled €32–48k behind a creator account, and 80% of its 54.9M EU reach was dark.
Darts and Aquarius led the public boosts
The Professional Darts Corporation ran October's biggest public boost: 11.2M reached on a modeled €45–68k. Aquarius took second and third with two Spanish creators on the same modeled €16–24k: singer Dani Fernández (649k followers) reached 8.4M and streamer Cristinini (1.1M followers) reached 8.2M.
Ninja Kitchen UK put France great Thierry Henry in front of 7.3M on a modeled €30–45k. Head and Shoulders reached 7.2M with a 35k-follower creator duo, on a modeled €30–46k, and the same duo fronted one of Austria's biggest public boosts.
Country spotlight: Austria
Austria took 1% of EU boosted-partnership reach in October. 39% of that reach was dark against the EU's 50%, and 86% of the ads had no public post.
Activia ran 96% of its 3.2M Austrian reach dark, and its two biggest dark ads both featured creator Tatjana Theresa Kreuzmayr (159k followers): 1.1M reached on a modeled €4–6k and 841k on a modeled €3–4k. McDonald's and HARIBO Österreich each reached 3.5M with 0% dark.
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.
