PayPal is entering the advertising sector with a new platform leveraging transaction data from its nearly 400 million active users. The payments company aims to help merchants increase sales while serving as a discovery tool for consumers.
“Commerce and advertising are deeply connected, and we believe that the advertising platform we are building at PayPal will become a must-use marketing channel for merchants big and small,” stated Diego Scotti, executive vice president and general manager for PayPal’s consumer business and global marketing and communications, in a press release.
A key component of this initiative is PayPal’s advanced offers platform, announced in January. This platform uses artificial intelligence to analyze nearly half a trillion dollars in transaction data, generating consumer insights and offering personalized deals. Merchants will pay based on performance, rather than impressions or clicks, potentially making PayPal a competitive ad partner in the media network space.
To lead this new venture, PayPal has hired Grether, who previously served as vice president and general manager of Uber’s ad business. At Uber, he helped grow Uber Advertising into a $1 billion enterprise serving over half a million advertisers worldwide. Grether also has experience in product strategy for Amazon’s ad business and has held executive roles at ad platform Sizmek and WPP’s Xaxis.
Anderson, recently from financial services firm Plaid, will oversee PayPal’s consumer business, including product strategy for PayPal and Venmo. Prior to Plaid, he spent a decade at Meta in various roles.
With this move into advertising, PayPal joins other financial entities like Chase Bank and hospitality companies such as Expedia in launching media networks. These networks aim to replicate the success of retail offerings by using companies’ first-party data to sell advertising across multiple channels.
Source: MarketingDive
