“Tee-Moo?” “Teh-Mu?” “Is It Dead?”
Temu has dramatically reduced advertising in the US – like, to near zero – and has fallen out of the top 10 for Apple’s and Google’s app stores, Adweek reports, after a yearslong run at or near the top spot.
Temu practically doesn’t exist as an American company, aside from as a paid media fire hose. The company’s Boston headquarters is a ghost town. There is no collection of people all pulling together who make up Temu, only a small group of accountants and lawyers, plus a postal address.
If Temu isn’t advertising … is it still Temu?
The disappearance of Temu’s many billions in annual online ad budgets in the US will ripple outward. Meta loses an advertiser spending more than $2 billion per year. Which even Meta feels.
And though Temu’s disappearance in America could create a vacuum other marketplaces can expand into, it may not be that easy. Temu pulling back should ostensibly be great for Etsy, for instance. But Etsy’s burgeoning ad business – one of its last remaining saving graces during tense investor calls – gets a plurality of its budgets from … Chinese sellers on Temu.
Also, while the US breathes air free of Temu ads, one nation’s treasure is another’s trash. China and the EU have no trade war, so Temu seems to be shunting ad budgets and plastic crap to Poland and other European states.
Sorry!
Laissez Le Bons Temps Rouler
Don’t worry, it’s not all bad news for the global economy!
Not for Publicis, at least, which was the first ad agency holdco to post Q1 2025 earnings since President Trump’s reciprocal tariff announcement on April 2, WSJ reports.
According to Tuesday’s report, Publicis’ net revenue grew organically by 4.9% from Q1 last year. The company is maintaining its net revenue growth forecast of 4% to 5% for the rest of the year, too.
Publicis also posted a surprisingly solid 4.1% organic growth rate in the US, thanks to new business from incoming clients like Coca-Cola, LinkedIn and Subway.
Of course, tariffs and looming economic uncertainty didn’t begin until early Q2, so it’s the next round of quarterly earnings that might look painfully different across the advertising industry. But Chairman and Chief Executive Arthur Sadoun told investors that he believes Publicis’ recent wins will offset potential advertising cuts this year.
Get Creative
Online advertising has always operated on a pendulum model. Marketers swing back and forth between trends: the power of data-driven personalization and optimization on one side and the value of ad creative on the other.
There are many examples of going deep into data-driven personalization: the endless A/B testing of whether blue or red backgrounds are better, ice cream or cake in the party supplies ad; Performance Max; the dynamic content revolution that never was.
That pendulum isn’t fair, though. The data-obsessed programmatic side tends to hang on long past its time to swing back. But creative-focused ad tech has momentum again at last, says Matt Barash, a programmatic journeyman sales leader who, on Tuesday, announced a new job as chief commercial officer at Nova (formerly Polar). In its current iteration, Nova does creative generation and optimization based primarily on a brand’s social media content.
“I think there’s this creative renaissance that’s about to happen,” Barash told AdExchanger. He cited Vibe, tvScientific and streamr.ai as examples of other companies where programmatic trading vets are focused on creative applications.
There’s also Spaceback, which he didn’t mention. But that’s a direct competitor. And Barash is back to sales.
But Wait! There’s More
Brands and agencies are adding AI officers to their C-suites. [Digiday]
OpenAI is working on its own Twitter-ish social network. [The Verge]
Perplexity AI integrates with Vespa AI for in-house search. [release]
TV measurement transparency is (finally) coming under some scrutiny. [Ad Age]
You’re Hired!
The agency PHD names Skye Yang as executive director, marketing science. [post]
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