Where Ads Morphs Into PayPal Media Network
Just over a year after being acquired by eBay and folded into its PayPal division, Where Ads has further sealed the deal with its name plate change to PayPal Media Network.
This represents more than just a name change though. As Where CEO (now PPMN General Manager) Walt Doyle told us on stage at ILM East, Where Ads is becoming a connected part of the closed loop commerce chain that eBay continues to build.
“It’s no longer e-commerce,” he said. “It’s just commerce.”
Through all of this, eBay has become my new favorite company to follow in the local media and tech sectors. Building on a series of acquisitions over the past 18 months, it has connected the dots for a very strategic pole position in local commerce.
This includes Where Ads to generate demand with targeted messaging. Then you have integrations to Milo for store inventory data to dig deeper into user intent and discovery. Then you have RedLaser as a search tool in retail contexts and PayPal to close the loop on transactions.
And around and around we go … It’s all tracked in a way that makes analytics and ongoing presence/campaign optimization much more transparent. Where’s name change simply signifies a deeper integration with this funnel.
Or as Doyle said, “It’s no longer a purchase funnel but a purchase pretzel!”
This aligns with PayPal Chief Scientist Mok Oh’s comments at ILM West: PayPal’s goal is to be present along the points of this funnel/pretzel/roller coaster or whatever form it takes next. This includes online, offline and mobile — all the places PayPal continues to plant stakes.
In addition to its longstanding strengths in online payments, this most recently includes point-of-sale integration for big-box retailers like Home Depot. It also includes the Square competitor PayPal Here, which brings the capability down market to the massive SMB market.
There’s lots more to discuss here about how all these pieces fit together, which is precisely what we’ll do at the MLM San Francisco conference next month with Mok Oh, and a growing cast of speakers. Hope to see you there.
I love the quote: “It’s no longer e-commerce,” he said. “It’s just commerce.”
This is going to be the message of the next 5 years.
The next 5 years will no doubt be a period of convergence. Offline and Online will converge with every retailer expected to be accessible not only at their bricks and mortar shops, but also online and via mobile devices. Similarly, we will see (we are already seeing) the convergence of the different aspects of business (advertising, customer management, payment processing, etc).
This move by Paypal is a great example of the convergence that is happening right now.