Temu spends heavily on advertising, with spending soaring 1000% year-on-year

Recently, news came that Temu officially opened its 49th station - South Africa Station.

The news mentioned that Temu will adopt the same strategy as other regions in South Africa, using large coupons, discounts and free shipping services to attract consumers. Although there is no mention of promotion, I guess it will be the same as other sites - a lot of advertising.

Temu's rapid success overseas was not only due to the objective factor that many countries were facing high inflation, but also to the platform's extensive advertising.

According to the latest research from advertising intelligence company MediaRadar, Temu's advertising expenditure increased by 1,000% year-on-year between January and November 2023. Of this, 76% of the funds were invested in social media channels, while digital media advertising accounted for only 13%.

In the past year and a half, Temu has placed advertisements in mainstream shopping channels accessible to consumers, such as TikTok, Instagram, and Google. According to statistics from MediaRadar , Temu's advertising investment in the United States exceeded US$517 million from September to December 2023 alone.

Goldman Sachs analysts also said that Temu invested about $1.2 billion in advertising in Mate alone in 2023. Mate's data also showed that Temu placed 8,900 advertisements on its channels in January last year alone.

In terms of large-scale events, Temu placed two 30-second ads in the Super Bowl in the United States last February, with a total value of US$14 million, an average of US$233,000 per second. And there are reports that Temu may spend a lot of money again to appear in this super event this year.

At the same time, Temu has not relaxed its investment in paid search. Taking TikTok as an example, the number of views of the #Temu tag has continued to soar, reaching 11 billion. The platform has also established a social media influencer program for accounts with 300 followers, and the number of participants has now exceeded 10,000.

With such a laborious and expensive strategy, Temu has "strongly" entered the field of vision of overseas consumers. In the United States, when searching for the keyword "Lego toy", Temu appears more frequently than Lego itself (Google channel); in the UK, Temu's "clothing accessories" category has a higher visibility than Amazon, eBay and even Nike, ranking first ( in the past 28 days).

In addition, Temu's user activity has also increased significantly, from 9% in September 2022 to 20% in October 2023, which also means that the stickiness of Temu users is increasing.

MediaRadar also predicts that Temu will continue to maintain this intensity of advertising investment this year, but the focus will be on social and phenomenal events; over time, Temu's advertising investment may slow down.

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