- By Sam Gruet
- Business and technology reporter
Image source, Getty Images
A record 123 million Americans tuned into this year’s Super Bowl.
But as well as getting the nation’s biggest sporting event, a blockbuster halftime performance and several camera cutaways of Taylor Swift in the crowd, they also got six 30-second commercials for Temu – a Chinese-owned e-commerce company.
The shopping giant has been criticised by politicians in the UK and US – a US government investigation finding an “extremely high risk” that products sold on Temu could have been made with forced labour.
Temu says it “strictly prohibits” the use of forced, penal, or child labour by all its merchants.
The company, which sells everything from clothes to electronics and furniture, first launched in the US in 2022 and later in the UK and the rest of the world.
Since then, it has consistently topped global app download charts, with just under 152 million Americans using it every month, according to data gathered by analyst SimilarWeb.
It’s “Amazon on steroids,” says retail analyst Neil Saunders, and with the tagline “shop like a billionaire” it has exploded in popularity, shipping to around 50 countries worldwide.
A typical 30-second Super Bowl commercial costs around $7m (£5.5m), during this year’s event Temu had six of them.
“It’s a lot of…
