Author: Krystal Scanlon

Tariffs dented Temu’s U.S. opportunity. Its ad spending has followed.

The Chinese e-commerce giant slashed its U.S. ad spend across nearly every major social media platform in 2026, according to data from Sensor Tower. It went from being X’s single largest advertiser between January to May 2025, to the 51st largest in the same time period this year, reducing by eight figures — or a 95% year-over-year slump — per the data. 

It wasn’t alone. 

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Publishers are quietly leaning harder on paid traffic to offset referral traffic declines, treating it as a lifeline for audience growth in a world where search referrals may eventually “go to zero.”

For many audience development teams, the question is no longer whether to buy traffic, but how far they can push it without tipping into the kind of arbitrage that buyers and made-for-advertising (MFA) blocklists now punish.

Publishers haven’t forgotten the paid-traffic reckoning of 2023, when the ANA’s report on MFA sites prompted agencies to slam the brakes on arbitrage inventory. That crackdown cast a long shadow over paid traffic in general, and even reputable publishers now approach the tactic far more cautiously for fear of being swept onto MFA blocklists. 

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