Financial media network

A financial media network is a commerce media network run by a bank, card network, payments company, buy-now-pay-later provider or digital wallet, built on transaction data rather than on a retailer's product catalogue.

The IAB's commerce media explainer lists "financial institutions" among the companies that turn first-party data and "proximity to customer journeys" into media (IAB, July 2025). The distinguishing feature is breadth without depth: a card issuer sees spend across every merchant but rarely sees the SKU. So the dominant product is the card-linked offer, where a merchant pays only when a cardholder who saw the offer transacts, which makes attribution a lookup rather than a model.

The live examples in the US are Chase Media Solutions, PayPal Ads, Klarna's Ads Manager, Mastercard Commerce Media and Amex Ads; in the UK, Revolut and Zilch. Their launch dates, data types and public scale figures are tabulated with sources in the commerce media networks directory. What they share is a regulatory perimeter that shapes the product: GLBA in the US restricts sharing of non-public personal information, PCI DSS governs card data, and GDPR and PSD2 apply in Europe, which is why these networks sell aggregated segments and offers rather than records.

Example: a card issuer shows a cardholder a 10% cash-back offer from a coffee chain inside its app; the cardholder pays with the card; the issuer settles the cash-back and bills the chain. No identifier left the bank.

Related: commerce media network, GLBA, clean room, closed-loop measurement.

Source: IAB, "Defining Commerce Media and Its Ecosystem" (July 2025). Market-size forecasts for the category are published by eMarketer and are cited, with dates, in the directory.

1. IAB, July 2025