Analysis: Temu and Shein are spending billions on Facebook, X, and YouTube ads in the US; Temu placed ~1.4M ads globally across Google services in the past year
meaning, if temu and SHEIN turn off the money faucet tomorrow they'd still have a broad base of Chinese revs Rat King / @mikeisaac : last thought and then i will shut up: Blitzing FB with ads to establish your company in USA isnt a guarantee of success Just ask WISH — once the top advertiser by dollars spent on FB years ago, now sold to a Singaporean company for $170mm~ or about 1/100th of its valuation peak Rat King / @mikeisaac : wondering why your feeds are flooded w/ ads from Temu and Shein lately? Chinese co's are flooding platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Google with ads to grow their businesses in the USA — 10% of Meta's revenues come from china now by @daiwaka and me https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Temu’s campaign extended beyond a six-slot Super Bowl push aimed at restoring U.S. shopper momentum. Its roughly 1.4 million placements across Google services show that the effort was not confined to a single brand moment but built around sustained distribution.
The spending also helps explain why Temu was reported as Meta’s top advertiser by revenue in 2023. Shein and Temu are using U.S. ad inventory as a central route to scale, even as their rivalry has included litigation over supplier access.
First-order effects
- Meta, Google and YouTube gain substantial demand for U.S. ad inventory, while users encounter far more Temu and Shein promotions across major consumer platforms.
- Temu and Shein can rapidly build U.S. reach through paid distribution; Temu’s large Google-ad volume indicates an always-on acquisition strategy rather than occasional campaigns.
Second-order effects
- Other retail advertisers face more competition for the same social and search audiences, raising pressure to defend visibility with sharper offers, better conversion, or higher ad budgets.
- The platforms become more exposed to the budgets of Chinese advertisers: the reported scale makes Temu and Shein material customers rather than ordinary marketplace advertisers.
Third-order effects
- If this spending remains durable, cross-border retail competition will increasingly be mediated by the auction systems of a small group of U.S. ad platforms, making distribution spend a strategic barrier to entry.
- The pattern favors retailers able to fund both aggressive pricing and persistent customer acquisition; Wish’s sharply diminished outcome is a reminder that ad saturation alone does not establish a lasting business.
The trend: Chinese commerce platforms are using concentrated U.S. digital-ad spending to convert low-cost supply and promotional offers into consumer-market share.