Paypal Is Building an Ads Platform: Klarna Envy?
In no universe should Klarna be exploring a $20B IPO, worth about one-third of Paypal. The only reason is criminal neglect of the Paypal enterprise in the past 20 years. The new CEO of Paypal seems to be trying to correct some old mistakes.
We actually can't know right now which items are checkbox buzzwords, and which items are here for the long term, and have legs.
Similar to Microsoft making Google dance on AI, Shopify and the broader payments market is making Paypal dance on innovation, or continue to a slow march to irrelevance.
As far as the Paypal advertising network announcement. Here are a few things mentioned in the release:
* Millions of consumer and merchant relationships.
* New leadership, Mark Grether does have a tremendous history in the advertising/media space. Amazon, Sizmek, Uber Ads, etc.
Paypal ads "will use customer insights to build a dynamic, truly personalized platform that will drive better advertising spend performance for merchants while delighting consumers with compelling offers. "
So, yeah, we know almost nothing right now. It's just as likely to get in the way of a transaction as it is to be helpful, until we learn more about the ad surfaces involved.
Paypal has wide reach, so it makes sense for them to explore. Right now, this is more of a wait and see proposition than anything else.
It sounds like the Paypal CEO feels they can transform their payment experience at the same time they add big new initiatives. We will find out soon if they are correct.
