Boston’s location-based mobile ad network WHERE Ads has today announced it is undergoing a makeover. Just barely a year after eBay acquired WHERE for a cool $135 million, the company will be changing its name to PayPal Media Network.
“This is much more than a rebrand of our name, however,” said Walt Doyle, former CEO of WHERE, now GM of PayPal Media Network via the PayPal Blog. “This change also marks the launch of a dynamic multi-channel advertising platform built to serve our retail partners during a time of immense change in consumer behavior.”
Integrating WHERE’s 70 million mobile users — one of North America’s largest location-based mobile advertising networks — into the PayPal Media Network allows advertisers in the eBay ecosystem to “not only reach an audience but also reach the right audience at the right time and place by tying together data, location, and purchase history” through a mobile platform.
The benefits of the PayPal Media Network are not limited to the eBay ecosystem. The company will offer brands, individual retailers, and restaurants distinctly effective media solutions for their businesses, both online and off. Doyle noted that the PayPal Media Network is “expanding this reach direct relationships and technology, and interfacing with multiple mobile and online bidding and supply and demand-side platforms.”
With the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds of commerce blurring, and consumer behavior becoming “multichannel,” shopping has become a “pretzel journey,” with no end and no beginning, according to Doyle. As such, advertisers need to find creative ways to touch consumers at various points of this purchase pilgrimage, and the PayPal Media Network will be integral at achieving this goal.
One of the most unique features that PayPal has proposed is the ability to not just walk into a store and purchase a product, on a mobile device via Red Laser, but the ability to gift a product in the same manner. As someone who is consistently sending late presents, this is particularly appealing to me.
