Shapee, the leading electrician platform in South-East Asia, announced that as of July 2025, it would gradually take off the manual advertising function at eight major sites, namely Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, including the search for advertisements and associated advertisements, and would move to full-stop extension. According to the official statement of Hope, the new functionality is aimed at helping sellers double the flow and increase the return on investment by integrating multiple traffic portals, such as in-station searches, daily discoveries and videos, and optimizing delivery with smart algorithms.
The full-station extension has simplified the advertising process, and the seller will be able to achieve a precise flow allocation through an AI-driven algorithm only by completing the three-step “Selection-Budget-Budget-Specific-Specific Targets ” . Compared to traditional manual advertising, which requires fine-tuning of keywords and bids, the new functionality uses Shopee’s big user data and behavioural analysis to automatically optimize the exposure of advertising in search, referral and video scenes.
This upgrade of the advertising system reflects the strategic adjustments made by Hopee to the electricity market in South-East Asia. In 2024, the electricity market in South-East Asia reached $216 billion, and is expected to grow by 52 per cent in 2025. However, Shopee faced competitive pressures from Lazada, Temu and TikTok Shop, particularly in terms of advertising efficiency and user-access costs. The offline of manual advertising is designed to address its complexity and high cost, but migration may pose short-term challenges for vendors who rely on traditional advertising.
Although the new functionality is promising, some vendors have expressed concerns. The offline of manual advertising may limit the seller ‘ s precision control of keywords, especially to the disadvantage of high SKU sellers. In addition, differences in the market network infrastructure and consumer behaviour in South-East Asia or the effect of influencing the spread of the whole station, such as logistics bottlenecks in the Philippines, may reduce the rate of conversion to advertising. Hopee plans to support the mitigation of these problems through localization of algorithms and multilingualism.
Shapee ‘ s full-stop extension upgrades were in line with the trend towards AI-driven electricity vendor marketing, and the formal relocation in July 2025 would re-establish the marketing model of South-East Asian sellers and help Hopee consolidate the market leadership.