# marketing spend

Free Milk Tea and Crashed Servers: China’s AI Giants Spend Billions to Buy Users — But Will They Keep Them?

China’s largest tech firms turned the Lunar New Year into a costly marketing contest, using red packets and free-order campaigns to drive downloads for their AI assistants. The promotions produced massive short-term engagement but exposed operational and product weaknesses, and highlighted that long-term success will hinge on embedding AI into daily services rather than on discount-driven spikes.