PayPal Launching Ad Network Fueled by User Purchase Data

PayPal plans to offer personalized promotions and advertising, targeting its approximately 400 million users.

PayPal is developing an advertising business that will leverage the vast amounts of data collected on consumer purchases and spending habits.

What’s happening?

This digital payments giant plans to create an ad network that will allow merchants and brands to target PayPal’s roughly 400 million users with personalized promotions and ads based on their transaction histories.

Why we care

Advertisers should be interested in this because PayPal has a significant amount of purchasing data from 400 million users, which could lead to sophisticated targeting and advertising across multiple channels (as PayPal plans to serve ads beyond its platforms) from a single platform.

Key hires

• Mark Grether, former head of Uber’s ad business, has been hired as SVP/GM of PayPal’s new PayPal Ads division to develop ad formats and build out the sales team.
• John Anderson, previously head of product and payments at Plaid, has been hired as SVP/GM of PayPal’s consumer group.

Details

PayPal already offers an “Advanced Offers” ad product that uses AI to provide PayPal users with targeted discounts from merchants whenever they make a purchase.

The company plans to expand this offering to sell ads to brands outside of its merchant network, which could be displayed across the web and connected TV.

What they’re saying

PayPal states that users can opt out of having their data included in ad targeting.

“If you’re someone who’s buying products on the web, we know who is buying the products where, and we can leverage the data,” Grether told the WSJ.

Between the lines

This move follows other financial giants like JPMorgan Chase entering the retail media ad space by monetizing their customer data.

PayPal’s ad business is still in its early stages and may struggle to make a significant impact on the fintech company, whose core payments processing business has higher profit margins.

PayPal’s ad ambitions come as the company aims to rebound from recent struggles, including major layoffs and a stock decline after forecasting muted profit growth this year.

This article available in Ukrainian.