Dive Brief:
- American Express is launching an ad network, building off a foundation established by its successful offers business over the past decade-plus, according to a press release shared with Marketing Dive. The announcement was timed to the start of Advertising Week New York.
- Amex Ads is powered by the payments provider’s first-party data, drawn from a base of 34 million U.S. card carriers, and touts a suite of measurement and brand-safety features. Luxury luggage maker Tumi and hospitality chain Marriott are among the brands seeing early success with the network’s offerings.
- American Express is the second payments firm to unveil a digital ad network in the past week, following a similar announcement from Mastercard. These moves speak to the rising prominence of commerce media, a trend that has seen businesses with troves of first-party customer data attempt to better monetize those assets through digital advertising.
Dive Insight:
Payments giants are staking a larger claim in the booming field of commerce media, with American Express and Mastercard unveiling competing ad networks within a week of each other. Both of these bets seek to build on the firms’ existing offers businesses, where they help brands better tailor rewards and content to cardholders, with the addition of new ad formats and the kinds of sophisticated measurement tools that are expected from digital platforms with scale. In American Express’ case, the news helps to kick off Advertising Week, a major industry gathering.
American Express said its offers segment drove $15 billion in spending last year, with the lion’s share stemming from the U.S. market. That provides a solid foundation upon which Amex Ads can expand, starting with American Express’ travel website before pushing into other platforms that carry high-intent audiences.
Marriott and Tumi piloted the network earlier this year with contextual campaigns that showed positive results. In Marriott’s case, it was looking to reach American Express customers who had already booked a flight but not a hotel via AmexTravel.com. By tapping into Amex Ads’ travel-booking and transaction data, the hospitality chain realized a return on investment 300% above its target. Meanwhile, Tumi ran ads angled at customers during and after their travel-booking experience, including in post-booking emails from Amex Travel, generating a return on ad spend 30% higher than benchmarks while tapping into a fresh set of young buyers.
“We were particularly impressed by how targeted our campaign was, allowing us to reach a new millennial and Gen Z audience, in addition to our core brand fans,” said Jill Krizelman, senior vice president of global marketing and e-commerce at Tumi, in a statement.
While those use cases represent advertisers endemic to travel, American Express said its network can also assist non-endemic advertisers in tracking sales lift both online and in store thanks to its end-to-end view into customer journeys. Keeping content within American Express’ “four walls” additionally ensures brand safety, privacy and that ads are appearing in premium environments, the company claims.
American Express and Mastercard doubling down on their advertising bets comes as a range of industries, including financial services, travel and hospitality and ride-hailing, adopt the media network model first popularized by retailers. U.S. ad spending on retail media is expected to close in on $100 billion by 2028, according to eMarketer forecasts, speaking to the large opportunity that other verticals see in monetizing their first-party data.
That said, retail media today is viewed as a category overcrowded with platforms that lack differentiation, and some experts believe it is primed for contraction. Whether that pattern will repeat with media networks in categories beyond retail remains to be seen, but another factor could lead to a short-term windfall for these platforms: More marketers are prioritizing ultra-targeted, performance-oriented channels as they try to weather a rocky economy beset by tariffs and tie marketing to concrete results.
