PayPal Is Planning an Ad Business Using Data on Its Millions of Shoppers (wsj.com) 35
PayPal hopes to boost its growth by starting an ad network [non-paywalled link] juiced with something it already owns: data on its millions of users. From a report: The digital payments company plans to build an ad sales business around the reams of data it generates from tracking the purchases as well as the broader spending behaviors of millions of consumers who use its services, which include the more socially-enabled Venmo app. PayPal has hired Mark Grether, who formerly led Uber's advertising business, to lead the effort as senior vice president and general manager of its newly-created PayPal Ads division. In his new role, he will be responsible for developing new ad formats, overseeing sales and hiring staff to fill out the division, he said.
PayPal in January introduced Advanced Offers, its first ad product, which uses AI and the company's data to help merchants target PayPal users with discounts and other personalized promotions. Advanced Offers only charges advertisers when consumers make a purchase. Online marketplaces eBay and Zazzle have begun testing it, according to a PayPal spokesman. But PayPal now aims to sell ads not only to its own customers, but to so-called non-endemic advertisers, or those that don't sell products or services through PayPal. Those companies might use PayPal data to target consumers with ads that could be displayed elsewhere, for instance, on other websites or connected TV sets.
PayPal in January introduced Advanced Offers, its first ad product, which uses AI and the company's data to help merchants target PayPal users with discounts and other personalized promotions. Advanced Offers only charges advertisers when consumers make a purchase. Online marketplaces eBay and Zazzle have begun testing it, according to a PayPal spokesman. But PayPal now aims to sell ads not only to its own customers, but to so-called non-endemic advertisers, or those that don't sell products or services through PayPal. Those companies might use PayPal data to target consumers with ads that could be displayed elsewhere, for instance, on other websites or connected TV sets.
A logical next move for Paypal (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sounds amazing. Just bought a new TV with Paypal? Here's an ad for another one!
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You give PayPal too much credit.
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Sounds like you need an ad for PayPal Credit. Spread your purchase of 6 months with zero interest and a small processing fee that's the equivalent of 1357% APR.
All the more reason (Score:2)
Terminate your Paypal account. I did over two years ago due to shifting policy changes and "new" features that were just all about putting things in their favor. It's sad really, they were an innovator and now they're just trying to milk it.
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I use PayPal daily. They have a very good interest rate on their savings accounts, offer 6 month interest free financing on their line of credit and allows me to centralize my payments to most online vendors so that I am not trusting anyone but PayPal with CC information (which is protected with a very strong password and TOTP MFA).
I direct deposit a small amount every paycheck and it acts as my "personal fun money" account.
I know it's an evil org and all... but I actually like it a lot.
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I once opened a Paypal account but the moment I went back to the auction page on Ebay I was presented with a specific group of ads that clearly had a preset default of some sort. Can't remember what they were now but I turned around and got the Paypal account deleted again the same day.
Haven't been back to either site.
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what a weird made up story, thanks for playing.
Ditched PayPal for Wise.com, life is good (Score:4, Interesting)
I have saved lots of money switching to Wise for currency transfers. It's hard to describe the difference between the two services, but Wise allows you to download or review transactions within currencies much easier than PayPal does. The paperwork/website from Wise is superior. I've got nothing but praise for Wise.com.
Re: Ditched PayPal for Wise.com, life is good (Score:2)
This is only the second time I've heard of wise.com. The first was a modest fraudulent transaction on my credit card about a year ago. Only ever time I've been the victim of any kind of credit card fraud, and no idea where the card details had leaked. Probably not Wise's fault, but if someone got my card details and was able to use them with Wise (and perhaps only Wise) fraudulently it doesn't fill me with confidence about their service.
Re: typo? isn't it supposed to be called (Score:2)
WiseGuy?
More ads. Yay. (Score:5, Interesting)
Will we eventually be able to convert the entire economy over to ad serving? I mean, clearly it's a money maker. Everybody wants a piece.
I'm a little baffled how advertising can be such a money maker. We all hate ads. We're all annoyed to no end by them. Yet businesses leap at the opportunity to create yet more ads. I just have trouble wrapping my head around how annoying the shit out of people = give us money. You wouldn't pay a dude to run around the office screaming in people's faces that they need to buy more $product_of_the_day, yet we accept that same action nearly everywhere we seek entertainment or information. And we literally pay for it. WTF?
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Re:More ads. Yay. (Score:5, Informative)
People talk about socialism a lot but we have ad-funded socialism already. Prices of everything would be higher without ads. Even people with ad blockers still get exposed to native advertising and word of mouth from other users who have ads enabled.
I think I see where you are going with that analogy; you are (a) confusing socialism (where workers control the means and output of production) with communism (where goods and money are distributed equitably to those that need them as they need them), and then (b) you are taking the communist concept of the equitable distribution of resources and inverting it to be the equitable distribution of costs -- right? Clever.
Note that I am not an economist, nor do I play one on TV. I expect and hope that there are many slashdotters who are more familiar with economic systems than me.
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I'm a little baffled how advertising can be such a money maker. We all hate ads. We're all annoyed to no end by them. Yet businesses leap at the opportunity to create yet more ads. I just have trouble wrapping my head around how annoying the shit out of people = give us money. You wouldn't pay a dude to run around the office screaming in people's faces that they need to buy more $product_of_the_day, yet we accept that same action nearly everywhere we seek entertainment or information. And we literally pay for it. WTF?
It's all about the exposure = Name recognition = There's no such thing as bad publicity.
How many times have you made a purchasing decision based on whether you've ever heard of the brand?
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I'm a little baffled how advertising can be such a money maker.
Because easily manipulated idiots are their primary customers. So what if you hate their ad, you would have bought nothing or a better product.
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It's a shame they had to shut down. That's a fantastic article.
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I'm a little baffled how advertising can be such a money maker. We all hate ads. We're all annoyed to no end by them. Yet businesses leap at the opportunity to create yet more ads.
We all hate spam as well, yet it persists because of the one-in-a-million idiot who actually buys the product.
Greed is alive and doing well... (Score:2)
Their greed is going to ruin a perfectly good service.
I guess I'll have to switch to Apple Pay going forward. I know everyone hates Apple, but at least they're not going to use the data to throw more ads in my face...
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Their greed is going to ruin a perfectly good service.
I guess I'll have to switch to Apple Pay going forward. I know everyone hates Apple, but at least they're not going to use the data to throw more ads in my face...
I believe I would update that last sentence to, "at least they're not using my data to throw more ads in my face today." The way this advertising thing is working today, eventually they'll have to if they want to keep up. It's gonna be ads all the way down, baby. We're gonna advertise our way out of this economic fiasco we call a country! Yeehaw!
GDPR (Score:2)
I was prescient (Score:2)
I haven't used PP for personal payments in a decade or more, preferring to pay using my Visa card. Always felt that PP was impersonating a bank without all those pesky rules and regulations that banks need to adhere to. Happy that I've also eluded another data sucker intent on making money by selling what they know about me.
Anyone taking bets about PP providing an "opt out" for this abomination?
Im absolutely amazed (Score:3)
Is there any trustworthy online company? (Score:2)
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Paypal is sickening. Google is sickening. If you had to read the rest, you would be sickened. Why should be accept this?
Find yourself an alternative and it'll either die, or monetize your data within a few months or years. It's either drop off the Internet, or be a data-cow generating profit for the tech companies. There's no other choice.
Totally makes sense (Score:1)
Why?
Because it's a scummy thing PayPal hasn't done yet. They've done every other scummy thing they could think up.
Scummy reselling of personal info: check!
And the target is ??? (Score:2)
I can only guess, but it is either advertising to people using PayPal to receive money, or to send it. Maybe both. So I am unlikely to encounter it, since I only use it to send money when there isn't another way, or I'm trying to hide my credit card information.
If it's on their website, it's something I can ignore. If they're selling my information to others, I can make sure they have nothing to sell.
I might be concerned if I was on their website multiple times per day, but it's been almost 3 years since I'
Hopefully they are better than Amazon at this (Score:2)
Amazon has the dumbest advertising algorithms I've ever seen. If you were to buy a pair of crutches Amazon would bug you for weeks about buying more crutches. This also happens with car parts. I guess this shows the faith that Amazon has in the products they offer. Want to buy another set of shocks for your car? You'll need them in a week. Or another back brace.
The only thing worse than their advertising algorithm is their useless search function.