Chinese-American billionaire and low-key entrepreneur-investor Duan Yongping publicly praised e-commerce giant PDD Holdings’ Temu for its marketing success, highlighting the budget-shopping site’s high-profile advertisements during the Super Bowl in 2023 and 2024.
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“The Super Bowl is a great platform for advertising, but I never managed to make it there,” Duan said during a speech at his alma mater Zhejiang University on Sunday. “Colin Huang Zheng, founder of Temu, did it.”
“Almost everybody in the US knows about Temu now … even my housekeeper is using it,” he added. “Many people are buying things on the platform. The business model is cool, and the quality is improving step by step.”
Duan is an early investor in PDD. As of September 30, the US$16.54 billion portfolio of his H&H International Investment firm consisted of PDD, as well as Apple, Alphabet, Alibaba Group Holding and Berkshire Hathaway, among other stocks, according to public filings. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
In an aggressive marketing push, Temu in the past two years spent tens of millions of dollars on commercials during the Super Bowl, the annual championship of the National Football League, that is the most expensive night to air television ads in the US.
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The campaign significantly boosted Temu’s visibility in the US, allowing the discount shopping platform to quickly gain traction among consumers.