PayPal builds new advertising platform, onboards ex-Uber head to lead ad biz
Accelerating consumer product innovation, the payments giant—PayPal plans to create the ad network using data from user purchases as well as wider spending patterns.
PayPal, the US-based payments giant is developing an advertising sales business built on its user data. The ad network will be built using data from user purchases as well as wider spending patterns from the millions of people using PayPal and Venmo, the company announced.
To lead this business, the company has hired Mark Grether, former Vice President, General Manager of Uber Advertising. Grether has been a leader in the advertising industry for more than 20 years and under his leadership, Uber Advertising grew to a $1 billion business with more than 500,000 advertisers globally.
"PayPal's long-standing relationships with millions of consumers and merchants make the company uniquely positioned to create an advertising platform that is rooted in commerce. Grether will join the company to build an advertising business that will help make merchants smarter to sell more products and services effectively, as well as enable consumers to discover more of what they love,” the company added in its statement.
The advertising business, which will include PayPal advanced offers platform, 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 company has also onboarded John Anderson as SVP, General Manager, Consumer Group, and will be accountable for PayPal's consumer business, including product strategy for PayPal and Venmo globally. In his earlier role, he was Head of Product and Payments at Plaid and has also spent a decade at Meta in numerous product and leadership roles.
According to the company’s most recent earnings report, PayPal processed 6.5 billion payments by roughly 400 million customers in the first quarter, whereas the total payment volumes climbed 14% to $403.9 billion during the quarter.
