PayPal Ads leverages horizontal transaction graph to scale shoppable CTV
PayPal Ads is focusing on the cross-platform integration of its shoppable CTV and web ad products, leveraging its proprietary transaction data for enhanced measurement and identity. The approach aims to reduce advertiser friction by enabling direct purchases within ad creatives, demonstrating positive return on ad spend for retailers like Adorama and Best Buy.
Key Takeaways
- Storefront Ads allow direct checkout within the creative, leveraging PayPal’s existing identity and fraud protection layers to bypass landing page redirects.
- Early retail performance data shows Adorama achieved a 7.3x incremental ROAS and Best Buy reached a 6.25x ROAS using the shoppable units.
- PayPal’s 'transaction graph' tracks cross-merchant behavior across 30 million merchants, enabling market share reporting that traditional isolated retail media networks cannot provide.
- A small business program launched in October 2025 now pools inventory from hundreds of SMBs to create unified merchant advertising opportunities.
Why It Matters
PayPal is challenging the 'walled garden' dominance of Amazon and Walmart by offering a horizontal commerce layer that tracks consumer behavior across the entire web rather than just a single retailer's site. For the streaming industry, this provides a critical link between CTV impressions and verified cross-merchant sales, potentially solving the attribution gap that has long plagued premium video. By keeping users on the publisher's site during checkout, PayPal also offers a more attractive proposition for media owners looking to protect dwell time. Watch for the adoption of Storefront Ads within upcoming upfront showcases as a signal of agency appetite for simplified, unified retail media buying.
Additional Context
The expansion of PayPal Ads follows a series of strategic moves to position the payment giant as a major commerce media player. In April 2026, the company launched 'Curated Ads,' which formally brought its closed-loop attribution to premium CTV and the open web, partnering with major media entities such as Warner Bros. Discovery and Tubi (per PayPal Corp, April 2026). This move was designed to replace modeled attribution with measurement tied to actual transactions, directly addressing a primary concern for CFOs regarding the efficiency of premium video spending.
SVP and GM Mark Grether, who joined PayPal from a similar leadership role at Uber Ads, has frequently contrasted PayPal’s 'transaction graph' against the social and interest graphs of platforms like Meta and TikTok. According to reporting from PYMNTS in January 2026, the company claims to see approximately 30% of all global online commerce, processing over 2.7 times the transactions per second of Amazon. This scale allows PayPal to provide an identity layer anchored in financial security, which is becoming increasingly valuable as the industry moves away from third-party cookies.
Recent industry data reinforces the shift toward this 'commerce media' model. Global retail media spend is projected to reach $163.2 billion by 2027, according to GroupM's 2024 forecast, with a growing focus on off-site activations. As of early 2026, PayPal is also targeting 'non-endemic' advertisers—those who do not sell products directly via PayPal—allowing them to use the transaction graph for precise audience targeting based on verified purchase history rather than inferred intent (per Financial IT, January 2026).
Read full article at retailmediabreakfastclub.com
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