If you tuned into the Super Bowl on Sunday, you might have found it almost impossible to escape Temu’s ads.
Thanks to its catchy jingle, the e-commerce site’s ad—which showed animated people shopping “like a billionaire” for as little as 99 cents—will likely echo in people’s heads for days to come.
The 30-second ad provided a lot of fodder for social media commentary, from how the ad looked slightly AI-generated to the realization that the company’s name is pronounced Teh-mu, not Tea-moo.
“I can’t believe I just learned that I, along with everyone I know, have been pronouncing Temu wrong this entire time,” one TikTok user, Mya Pfeifer, said in a video Monday. (She still pronounced it Tea-moo.)
Temu’s ad aired not once, not twice, but upward of three times throughout the game. With a 30-second ad at the Super Bowl clocking in at about $7 million this year on average, it’s safe to say Temu spent a pretty penny in securing its spaces
“TEMU GOT 3 SUPER BOWL ADS MONEY????” asked one X user, under the handle @BigTucsonDad, on Sunday.
Yes, Temu does have that money. In fact, that’s spare change for a company that is on track to spend billions on marketing over the course of the year, according to some estimates.
While Temu’s revenue is unclear, parent company
PDD Holdings
has deep pockets. It raked in $9.4 billion in sales in its most recent quarter and spent more than $2 billion in advertising across all of its businesses, up 58% compared with the same period last year. PDD’s e-commerce platform in China, Pinduoduo, comprises the bulk of the company’s revenue.
“While we have broadened our reach, the [Temu] business is still in its early stage and it will face uncertainties,” said co-CEO Lei Chen in a call with analysts following PDD’s third-quarter earnings report. “We are excited and intrigued by the opportunities and challenges that come with international development.”
Temu didn’t immediately respond to Barron’s requests for comment.
Most of PDD’s sales come from China, where the company was founded as Pinduoduo in 2015. PDD moved its headquarters to Dublin in 2023 as it looks to expand in Western markets. PDD is betting that offshoot Temu, which it says it founded in Boston in 2022, will help secure a foothold among U.S. consumers.
Shoppers can find just about anything on Temu’s website and app, from apparel and accessories to electronics and home décor, usually at bargain prices. A pair of sterling silver earrings will set you back $6.47, while a camera drone costs just under $17. The items are typically shipped directly from Chinese manufacturers, operating under a similar business model as rival Shein.
For Temu, Super Bowl advertising has had a big payoff. Last year, the company unveiled its first-ever ad during the Big Game. The ad helped Temu rack up close to 430,000 downloads of its app over the course of the weekend, according to data from Sensor Tower. It also saw 2.4 million active users on its site and app during the game, Sensor Tower said. Temu closed out the year as the most downloaded app in the U.S.
The app’s popularity is no fluke. In a Jefferies survey of about 600 consumers that analyst Brett Thill wrote about in a note last week, 56% of respondents said they had shopped on Temu, with nearly half of those saying they expect their spend to remain the same this year, and others saying they planned to increase their spend either on Temu or Shein. The customers who planned to shop more at Shein or Temu said they would likely cut back spending on other retailers, including
Amazon.com,
Walmart,
and
Target,
the survey found.
PDD’s American depositary receipts were up 3.1% on the buzz generated by the Super Bowl ad on Monday.
The ADR has shed 10% this year, battered by concerns over China’s sluggish recovery. PDD’s executives highlighted in its latest earnings call with analysts that Temu is still in its early stages and faces several uncertainties, including whether it can continue to scale as quickly as it has over the past year.
“While our survey suggests that Temu and Shein are successfully penetrating a cost-conscious apparel shopper during a period of tradedowns, we question whether they will be able to successfully expand their offerings and sustainably grow their existing shopper base,” wrote Jefferies’ Thill.
Temu also faces rising scrutiny from Congress, which has criticized the company’s labor practices. Ahead of the Super Bowl, a group of 11 Republican lawmakers urged
CBS
and Paramount—the companies broadcasting the game—not to run Temu’s commercials. Legislators said that airing the commercials would give airtime to a company that has a “pattern of noncompliance” with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
“Allowing these commercials to air would be a touchdown for the Chinese Communist Party against the home team,” the letter reads.
Write to Sabrina Escobar at [email protected]
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