PayPal is building an advertising platform, tapping into its trove of customer data to help merchants better target their ads.
The payments giant has hired Uber's Mark Grether to build a business that "will use customer insights to build a dynamic, truly personalised platform that will drive better advertising spend performance for merchants while delighting consumers with compelling offers".
The business will include the PayPal advanced offers platform, which launched earlier this year and promises to give merchants the ability to reach customers based on what they have actually bought across the internet, down to the stock keeping unit and the individual product.
Diego Scotti, EVP, GM, consumer group and global marketing and communications, PayPal, says: "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. I'm thrilled to have Mark join our team and lead this important work."
PayPal is not alone in using its customer data for advertising - in April JPMorgan Chase launched a digital media business that lets advertisers use transaction data to target the bank's 80 million customers.
Grether is not the only new hire for PayPal, with Plaid's John Anderson also joining as SVP, GM, consumer group, leading product strategy for PayPal and Venmo globally.