Temu splashes out on Super Bowl ads as interest on the Chinese e-commerce app fades among US shoppers
- The number of Americans shopping on Temu is falling, and many users plan to shop less on the app, according to recent surveys
- Despite questions around the long-term profitability of the Chinese e-commerce app, many analysts are looking past the waning sales
Observed sales fell 12.5 per cent month-on-month in December and 4.8 per cent in January, a sharp drop from the Chinese e-commerce app’s growth of more than 50 per cent in mid-2023, according to Bloomberg Second Measure data tracking a subset of US credit and debit card transactions. Overall US retail sales rose in December.
The number of Americans shopping on Temu is also falling, according to the Second Measure data, while a late-January survey from Morgan Stanley found nearly a third of its users plan to shop less on the app over the next three months – only eBay and Etsy had weaker outlooks.
Temu’s Super Bowl spend may have run into the tens of millions of dollars – a 30-second commercial during Sunday night’s game cost about US$7 million. Web searches for the app spiked when its ads aired, according to Google Trends data, but searches have been steadily declining since early July.
The waning revenue and user figures raise questions around whether Temu’s explosive US growth may be cresting long before it presents any real threat to juggernauts like Amazon.com, which gained market share in December as shoppers prioritised speedy deliveries over Temu’s low prices but slow shipments.
