A record 123 million Americans watched this year’s Super Bowl. In addition to the top half-time entertainment, the crowd was treated to six 30-second commercials for Temu – the Chinese online shopping giant.
Although wildly popular in the United States (U.S.), the Chinese company has come under fire from politicians in the U.S. and the United Kingdom (UK) over suspicions that the products on its platform were made through forced labor, resulting in a government investigation in the U.S.
Temu, on the other hand, claim that they strictly forbid the use of forced, penal or child labor by their traders.
The company, which sells a variety of products from clothing to electronics to furniture, launched in the U.S. in 2022 before expanding to the UK and the rest of the world.
Since then, it has been consistently at the top of the most searched applications with almost 152 million Americans using it every month, according to data from analytics firm SimilarWeb, writes the BBC.
It’s ‘Amazon on steroids’, says retail analyst Neil Saunders, and Temu’s ‘shop like a billionaire’ slogan has attracted users from 50 countries around the world.
A 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl costs about seven million dollars, which means that Temu spent at least $42 million this year on his six commercials aired during America’s biggest sporting event.
”That’s a lot of money. But the investment paid off. The advertisement was seen by a huge number of people and the number of downloads of Temu’s application increased sharply,” explained Saunders, Biznis Info reports.
