PayPal is open to business with advertisers.
Today, PayPal is formally launching PayPal Ads, its arm that sells digital ads using data about what people buy across its properties within the U.S. PayPal Ads is led by Mark Grether, an advertising executive who previously built Uber and Amazon’s ad businesses.
PayPal is pitching aggregated transaction data from its 400 million active users across its properties, Grether told ADWEEK in an interview.
“The sheer amount of transaction data that we have at our fingertips is just incredible—it’s much more than any single retailer would ever have,” Grether said.
As retailers of all sizes, like Walmart, Instacart, and Best Buy are growing their ad businesses, PayPal is the newest financial company to get in on the game. In April, JPMorgan Chase also formally launched its ad business this year, and American Express also recently revamped its ad business.
In January, PayPal began testing an ad product within PayPal’s app called Advanced Offers that allows advertisers to target cash-back promotions and discounts to users. PayPal Ads expands those tests to sell display ads across PayPal’s properties, which include PayPal’s app, payment-sharing app Venmo, and coupon and cash-back shopping tool Honey.
Targeting ads with data
Grether said that PayPal Ads is selling display ads on its own properties, eventually expanding to sell video ads within the next year. Ads will also be sold using self-serve technology within the next year, Grether said.
PayPal will also sell ads on retailers’ own websites starting next year, Grether said. Millions of merchants use PayPal’s technology to power payments. PayPal Ads will sell placements across these merchants, allowing advertisers to target a large base of ecommerce shoppers across retailers.
In one example, PayPal Ads could sell ads on retailer’s order confirmation pages that appear after someone places an order. In this example, PayPal’s placements will look similar to ad formats sold by Rokt, an ecommerce firm that powers ads for retailers like Macy’s.
In another example, Grether said that PayPal Ads will use its data to help brands that sell items at multiple stores—like fashion brands—increase their market share at specific retailers. That can include advising brands on which retailers to spend ad dollars with and the most effective audiences to target.
The move addresses one of advertisers’ largest problems with retail media. Retailers have data to show advertisers what people bought at their store but they don’t have broader insight into shopping patterns. And advertisers are increasingly looking to target large groups of people who buy things across multiple retailers.
Grether said that this ability differentiates PayPal from other retail-specific ad networks.
“We can show how market share is evolving, which is quite unique because you typically don’t know every single merchant where a brand is sold,” Grether said.
Grether said that he expects performance advertisers to be first to test ads, with more branding-focused ad budgets opening as more ad formats roll out.
The anti-retail ad networks
Grether said that PayPal wants to differentiate itself by being a non-retail network. Unlike individual retailers, PayPal and other financial companies have a broader purview of how people shop across multiple retailers. With Honey, for example, PayPal can also observe what retailers people visit but don’t buy from, which indicates purchase intent, Grether said.
Grether said he expects there to be consolidation among retailers’ ad networks.
“Many of them don’t have the reach and frequency to survive on their own because an agency cannot handle a media plan with 300 line items,” he said. “Aggregation is inevitable and will happen.”
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