PayPal Launches Its Ad Business to Pitch Shopping Data

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.”