Five adverts for the Chinese shopping app Temu have been banned in the UK for their sexualised nature, with one found to have been irresponsible in how it depicted a young girl to sell bikinis.
The company has been warned against presenting under-18s in a sexual way in future or portraying adults as “stereotypical sexual objects” after several ads featured “disembodied images of the women wearing tight and revealing clothing”.
The fast-growing tech business was reprimanded by the UK’s advertising watchdog after one of its ads used a model who appeared to be aged between eight and 11 posed with her hand on her hip, which was found to be “quite adult for a girl of her age”.
The picture appeared alongside ads for household products including a facial roller, balloon ties and a jockstrap which, as they lacked labels, “appeared to be items sexual in nature”, according to the Advertising Standards Authority.
Banning the ad, which appeared on a regional newspaper site, the ASA said the girl’s pose and the ads it was shown alongside had “the effect of portraying a child in a sexual way and was irresponsible”.
It also criticised Temu for three ads, two on a chess website and one on a translation site, that featured women wearing tight-fitting clothing “that accentuated their body shape” but did not show their faces in full. The outfits included a jumpsuit with cut-outs showing parts of the model’s body, including her midriff and chest.
The ads were shown alongside those for household objects that “could have been interpreted as sexual in nature”, according to the ASA. The facial roller and balloon ties were “phallic” and the foot massager “could also have been understood in the same way”.
A jockstrap was “augmented in the crotch, emphasising the outline of genitalia” while some cycling underwear had pink padding at the back and “appeared as underwear with the bottom cut out”. A further ad, shown in a puzzle app, featured images of leopard-print underwear with the back removed and a woman wearing a short black skirt and tights.
The ASA found that the ads were “likely to cause widespread offence” as they appeared in media where adult-themed or sexual products were “unlikely to be anticipated”.
It said: “We told [Temu] to ensure that future ads were prepared with a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society, and that they did not cause serious or widespread offence by presenting products in a sexual way in general media or by presenting individuals as stereotypical sexual objects.
“In addition, persons who were or appeared to be under 18 years of age in ads must not be portrayed in a sexual way and ads must be responsibly targeted.”
Bylines Network, the publisher of the regional newspaper site where the young girl in a bikini appeared, said it had now blocked Temu from advertising on its site as the company was selling items it did not want displayed. The company said it had “strict controls to prevent inappropriate advertising” but the offending ad was listed as a shopping site and so had been permitted.
The chess site said it had contacted its advertising management partner to prevent Temu ads being shown on its platform again as the images did not align with its values.
Temu said all of the product photos complained about had been provided by third-party sellers, who had to stick to its marketplace policies that prohibited pornographic, obscene or harassing images. It said the image of the child violated its marketing policy, had been removed from its Google Ads account and would not be shown again.
Temu said the images of adult models without a face were not intended to sexually objectify the women but to give “a clear representation of how the clothing was worn” – a similar approach to that on other e-commerce platforms. It said the models were all appropriately dressed and were not posed in a sexual way and the images were not focused on the model’s specific body parts.
Temu added that the combination of products in an ad was not selected directly by Temu but by its partner Google Ads. Temu uploads more than 1m product descriptions and images are uploaded to its Google account labelled by product category, price range and sales volume. Temu chooses the product categories to be promoted and Google Ads’ algorithm picks products from that category to create a display ad. Temu said the pictures of household objects were not sexual or offensive and showed the items in their “original state, unaltered”.
