Temu Spent Tens of millions on Six Tremendous Bowl Commercials as It Tries to Win Again US Consumers

Temu spent weighty on the Tremendous Bowl on Sunday night time, airing its commercial six instances and providing $10 million in giveaways because it hopes to reinvigorate wavering US enlargement.

Noticed gross sales fell 12.5 % month-on-month in December and four.8 % in January, a well-dressed shed from the Chinese language e-commerce app’s enlargement of greater than 50 % in mid-2023, in keeping with Bloomberg 2nd Measure information monitoring a subset of US credit score and debit card transactions. General US retail gross sales rose in December.

The collection of American citizens buying groceries on Temu may be falling, in keeping with the 2nd Measure information, pace a late-January survey from Morgan Stanley discovered just about a 3rd of its customers plan to buy much less at the app over the after 3 months — best eBay Inc. and Etsy Inc. had weaker outlooks.

Temu’s Tremendous Bowl spend could have run into the tens of hundreds of thousands of bucks — a 30-second business all over Sunday night time’s recreation price about $7 million. Internet searches for the app spiked when its advertisements aired, in keeping with Google Tendencies information, however searches were often declining since early July.

The waning income and person figures carry questions round whether or not Temu’s explosive US enlargement is also cresting lengthy ahead of it items any actual warning to juggernauts like Amazon.com Inc., which received marketplace proportion in December as consumers prioritised fast deliveries over Temu’s low costs however gradual shipments.

Nonetheless, many analysts are having a look hour the waning gross sales. Temu shifted advertising spending to alternative international locations towards the tip of 2023, Sky Canaves, senior analyst at Insider Understanding, mentioned in an interview. “Their traffic and sales are still very dependent on the marketing and advertising budget,” she mentioned.

Temu’s January gross sales have been up 805 % as opposed to January 2023, in keeping with 2nd Measure information, quadruple the expansion of second-place Range Exploration Applied sciences Corp. and a long way above rival Amazon’s 1.7 %.

Stocks of Temu’s mother or father corporate PDD Holdings Inc. have fallen just about 10 % this moment, however its valuation has hovered round that of rival Alibaba Workforce Maintaining Ltd., which has greater than 3 times PDD’s gross sales.

A lately introduced plan to evident its platform to American and Ecu dealers may spice up orders, Morningstar Inc. senior analyst Chelsey Tam mentioned. However a go back to its fast enlargement will require PDD to secure providing steep reductions and rebates. Margins have declined in contemporary quarters and are anticipated to secure declining.

“Profitability is a concern. It’s just not a priority right now,” Tam mentioned.

Through Rachel Phua

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