PayPal’s Jenna Griffith on building a media business from transaction data

PayPal is building an ad business rooted in something more durable than third-party cookies: purchase behavior. On The Current Podcast, Jenna Griffith, VP of global ad operations at PayPal, explains how the company is leveraging what it calls a “transaction graph” to power programmatic ads across the open web.

With visibility into more than 30 million merchants and 400 million shoppers, PayPal can help brands reach consumers based on what they’ve bought — and what they might buy next. “We really wanted to make sure that advertisers were able to utilize that graph not just in our owned and operated PayPal properties, but also in a curated set of media properties that they would like to run in that’s most relevant for their consumers,” Griffith says.

That distinction sets PayPal apart from traditional retail media networks, which are often limited to a single retailer’s ecosystem. Because PayPal isn’t tied to a specific commerce site, it opens the door for non-endemic brands — such as travel, auto or insurance — to use commerce data for brand-building.

Early demand is promising. Publicis Media is one of the first agencies testing PayPal’s offsite ad offering, and feedback has been broad and cross-vertical. “We equally are seeing excitement from our non-endemic brands and ones that think these insights that come from this transaction graph are a very large opportunity for them to continue to build brand, even if it is not with a specific e-commerce action at the end of it,” she says.

As the industry prepares for cookie deprecation, Griffith sees a larger shift underway: “This idea of transaction as the new cookie is very interesting,” she says. And as more companies with valuable first-party data enter the media space, she predicts consolidation will follow — likely within two to three years.

From AI-powered creative to seamless checkout within ads, PayPal’s goal is to create better ad experiences while helping marketers drive results. PayPal is building its ad operations with “AI front and center … rather than try to retrofit old processes,” she says.