Taobao's performance during the 2025 Double 11 shopping festival highlighted a stark dichotomy: while traffic soared, user complaints surged in tandem.

Throughout this period, Taobao witnessed robust traffic growth. According to Tmall Double 11 statistics, by November 5, the number of e-commerce orders generated by new users attracted through Taobao Flash Sales during the Double 11 event had surpassed 100 million, providing substantial momentum for the promotion.

However, beneath this impressive growth, lurk concerns that demand attention.

Taobao's aggressive promotion of “shake-to-engage” advertisements has triggered widespread user dissatisfaction. As reported by Sina News, the Market Supervision Administration in Yuhang District, Hangzhou, received related complaints on November 6 and referred them to the Online Supervision Branch for investigation. This incident is not merely an operational misstep but rather indicative of a strategic imbalance as the platform grapples with growth pressures.

Traffic Anxiety and Monetization Dependency

Taobao's fervent promotion of “shake-to-engage” ads is, in essence, a reactive strategy driven by three key pressures: approaching growth limits, an urgent need for transformation, and a reliance on a singular profit model. The primary motive behind this approach is prioritizing short-term gains over long-term ecosystem development, resulting in a strategic imbalance.

Firstly, user growth is decelerating while competitors are gaining momentum. Data reveals a slowdown in Taobao's growth rate.

According to QuestMobile, in September 2025, the monthly active user growth of the Taobao APP stood at only 4.1%, a stark contrast to the 25% year-on-year increase recorded in August. This suggests that Taobao's user growth has nearly reached its peak.

Consequently, the fading of traffic dividends is the underlying cause. With the mobile internet user base reaching saturation, Taobao struggles to retain existing users and attract new ones. In this context, Taobao resorts to “coercive” ad viewing to capture fragmented user time and sustain traffic and engagement.

Secondly, the urgency of new business transformation necessitates a steady influx of traffic for Taobao.

According to Alibaba's Q2 financial report, the revenue from Taobao Flash Sales' instant retail business amounted to RMB 14.784 billion, a relatively modest contribution. In Q2 2025, Alibaba's total revenue stood at RMB 247.652 billion, with instant retail accounting for approximately 5.97% of the total.

To expedite new business growth, the platform has opted for aggressive advertising as a “quick fix” to attract users.

Thirdly, profit pressures have led to passive compromises.

Intense price wars in the e-commerce sector and rising logistics costs have squeezed Taobao's profit margins from transaction commissions. With higher profit margins, advertising revenue has become Taobao's “lifeline.” Thus, to meet short-term profit objectives, Taobao has overlooked the long-term value of user experience and continued to ramp up ad placements.

However, Taobao's reliance on aggressive advertising has yielded clear negative repercussions. If Taobao fails to promptly recalibrate its strategy to balance short-term gains with long-term development, its transformation journey will encounter greater hurdles and challenges.

Omnichannel Competition Dilemma Amidst Triple Pressure

The 2025 Double 11 battle has escalated into an omnichannel competition, with Pinduoduo waging a price war, Douyin diverting traffic through content, and JD.com focusing on user experience. These three rivals have encircled Taobao from price, content, and fulfillment perspectives, forcing Taobao into a multi-front war with limited strategic flexibility.

Firstly, Pinduoduo is capturing Taobao's core users through low-price strategies and supply chain innovations.

As the annual consumption peak, Double 11 witnesses a significant rise in user price sensitivity. Pinduoduo's low-price strategy and supply chain advantages have come to the fore during this period, directly impacting Taobao's market share in core categories and compelling Taobao into a dilemma of “lowering prices to retain users or maintaining prices and losing market share.” According to the 2025 Double 11 Family Consumption Research Report, 34% of households consider Pinduoduo the “best value” choice for daily necessities after JD.com, surpassing Taobao and Tmall.

Secondly, Douyin is siphoning user attention and marketing budgets from Taobao through content leadership and short-path transactions.

Leveraging its core strengths of “scenarized promotional content + instant transaction paths,” Douyin has further encroached on user time and brand marketing resources during Double 11, directly undermining Taobao's traditional shelf e-commerce traffic base and profit support.

First, Douyin's content format aligns better with current users' fragmented and entertainment-driven consumption habits, offering far greater interactivity than Taobao's one-way “search-to-purchase” shelf model. During Double 11, Douyin launched engaging content such as “promotional product reviews,” “live-streamer flash sales,” and “origin-direct sourcing,” which directly stimulate users' promotional consumption impulses.

Second, Douyin's algorithmic recommendations precisely match user interests, delivering personalized promotional content such as “cross-store discounts” and “limited-time offers” during Double 11, reducing consumer decision-making costs. In contrast, Taobao still relies on user-initiated searches, resulting in lower traffic acquisition efficiency.

Finally, JD.com focuses on fulfillment efficiency in instant retail, competing head-on with Taobao Flash Sales through its “front-end warehouses + self-operated logistics” layout. According to Red Star News, JD.com's Double 11 order volume increased by over 125% year-on-year, with self-operated instant delivery warehouses fulfilling orders in as fast as five minutes.

On one hand, JD.com leverages its years of accumulated self-operated logistics to integrate warehousing and delivery resources, forming an “integrated warehousing and delivery” instant fulfillment capability with a unified service standard and stable timing, thanks to its in-house logistics team. On the other hand, Taobao Flash Sales primarily relies on third-party local life service providers, whose varying service qualities make it difficult to ensure consistent fulfillment experiences.

Additionally, JD.com exerts stronger supply chain control in categories like 3C and home appliances, offering better product quality and after-sales support. In contrast, Taobao Flash Sales' products mostly come from third-party merchants, making quality control more challenging. The gap in fulfillment efficiency and experience directly leads to lower user retention rates for Taobao's instant retail.

Under this dual pressure, Taobao's aggressive advertising strategy has not only failed to resolve its growth dilemma but also exacerbated user and brand attrition. Facing both internal and external challenges, how can Taobao balance short-term growth with long-term ecosystem development and reconstruct its core competitive barriers?

What Lies Ahead

Currently, Taobao confronts intensifying internal and external competition and stricter regulatory scrutiny. If it persists in prioritizing “traffic above all else” and neglects long-term user experience, sustainable development will be challenging. Taobao must overhaul its underlying logic through optimizations in marketing, products, evaluation metrics, and ecosystem development.

First, transition from “traffic harvesting” to “value delivery.” The core value of advertising lies in establishing “value resonance” with users, not merely capturing attention. For frequently purchased essentials, such as when users search for “laundry detergent,” recommend cost-effective options and bundling strategies to avoid indiscriminate forced redirects. For infrequently purchased non-essentials, use short videos to explain product features and user reviews, reducing marketing aggressiveness and improving user acceptance.

Second, prioritize user consent and ensure transparency and controllability. Taobao must upgrade its product features to return ad control to users and reduce complaints at the source. Incorporate an “Ad Preference Management” module in the APP's personal center, allowing users to customize ad types, trigger methods, and exposure frequency, and support “one-click disabling of all non-essential ads” to lower user setup barriers.

Third, integrate user experience into core metrics to drive business units to prioritize rights protection. Establish a “User Experience System” with core metrics including ad complaint rates, ad closure rates, user experience satisfaction, and ad preference setup usage rates. Link these metrics directly to the quarterly performance of advertising and product departments, compelling business units to prioritize user rights protection.

Fourth, prioritize compliance and dynamic adaptation to balance commercial goals with long-term development. Strictly adhere to regulatory compliance requirements, conduct regular ad compliance self-checks, and ensure all ad formats meet legal standards to reduce regulatory penalties.

The key to Taobao's breakthrough lies not in “reducing ads” but in “making ads more valuable and optional.” This process necessitates not only technological innovation but also a redefinition of advertising's role and value from the user's perspective, thereby fostering a healthier and more sustainable e-commerce ecosystem in the digital age.