PayPal to expand its ad business using shopper data 

Digital payment platform PayPal is planning to build an ad business unit powered by the data from the hundreds of millions of shoppers that use the platform to pay for online purchases.

This week, PayPal announced it hired Mark Grether as senior vice president, general manager, PayPal Ads. His role will be to build an advertising unit that will use customer insights to power a personalized platform. PayPal processed 6.5 billion payments from approximately 400 million customers in the first quarter, according to its most recent earnings report.     

Previously, Grether worked at Uber as the vice president, general manager of Uber Advertising. While he was there, Uber Advertising grew to a $1 billion business with more than 500,000 advertisers globally, according to PayPal’s press release with this announcement.  

Earlier this year, PayPal introduce its first advertising unit, Advanced Offers, which displays personalized ads to PayPal shoppers using artificial intelligence, according to the company. Grether will continue to build its ad business with Advanced Offers.

Read the full article with PayPal’s ad business plans here.